The door burst open and several men stepped inside. “Stand up,” one of them said to me. “You are the first to die, American pig”. My hands were still tied and I felt helpless as one of them approached me with another blindfold. I told them that I did not want a blindfold – not out of any bravado, but because I found that the sense of fear was magnified by the inability to see. I received a punch on the head for my protest and the blindfold was pulled snugly into place. This time they added a gag and a black hood.
“If my people hear someone speak English they will beat you to death before I can stop them, now move!”
Once again, I could feel the claustrophobia and fear beginning to panic me, and I struggled to maintain some composure. The cries of fear and alarm from Zeynep had caught the attention of the woman, who apparently had not realized that the men were detaining a female. She entered our cell and a heated discussion took place between her and the fighters. Several times I was struck during this conversation and I still believed I was about to die. Finally one of the mujahedeen came close to me and whispered, “I have a brother in Canada. I have just saved you my friend – at least for now.”
Instead of being shot, they had decided to take us with them. They had learned that the Americans were about to bomb their complex so they were going to leave Tal Afar until the air strikes were over. The hood and mask remained in place, and the man who said he’d saved me warned me not to make any noise. “If my people hear someone speak English they will beat you to death before I can stop them, now move!”
Once again I was roughly manhandled through the passageways and pushed into the backseat of a car. I was shaking uncontrollably as I realized that I was not going to die – at least not that moment.
“Why be sorry? We celebrate his entry into Heaven.”
Although the Americans had claimed they had ‘sealed off’ Tal Afar prior to launching their offensive, I soon learned it was nothing more than wishful thinking. We had left the bunker in a six car convoy and made our way northward into the open desert. It had taken some time before the mujahedeen in our car had relented and allowed us to remove our hoods and blindfolds. Our hands were still tied, but I had sweat so much in the 45 degree heat that the moisture had loosened the straps. I was able to free my hands easily, and in an effort to gain their trust, I had shown them that my bonds needed to be retied. The man next to me simply laughed and instructed me to “forget about it. After all where can you go in the desert?”
As we began chatting, this short grey-haired man with a close-cropped beard informed me that his brother was the now deceased Emir. “I’m sorry about his death,” I said, to which he replied, “Why be sorry? We celebrate his entry into Heaven.”What was reassuring to me was that, as the brother of the former leader, this man appeared to have filled the immediate leadership void in the group. I was especially relieved to learn that his brother had told him of the decision to set us free. We were also told that we had only to have our identities confirmed – via a Google search on the internet – and he would keep the promise of the martyred Emir. In the meantime, we would remain with the mujahedeen.Around 2 p.m. we had stopped near a remote desert house. The nearly 30 fighters had assembled around our car and began to conduct a mass prayer. Zeynep and I were instructed to remain in the car. It was as they were engrossed in their prayer that I spotted the two American helicopters coming out of the south, low and fast and headed straight towards our parked convoy. I cried out in alarm. At first the mujahedeen were angry at the interruption until they too spotted the approaching threat. Caught out in the open, they were sitting ducks. Nobody could move; they simply watched the helicopters steadily bear down on us.
At about 800 metres distance, the gunships inexplicably banked away to the east without so much as a reconnaissance overpass of our mysterious group of vehicles in the middle of the desert. We had to have been in plain view, but the Americans turned away. “They always fly the same patrol routes” explained one of the fighters,“They see nothing.”
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