Since Jill Carroll's release, rumors have swirled about a $10 million or even a $36 million ransom payment. Iraqi politician Adnan al-Dulaimi's claim to have paid $1.5 million to free Ms. Carroll (See Aug. 22 story), is just the latest.

Such rumors are not without precedent. Most releases of foreign hostages in Iraq have involved ransoms into the millions of dollars. Carroll's captors told her in January that they were seeking $10 million, but they later said that their leadership had decided against accepting money for her release.

Neither the Monitor nor the Carroll family paid for her release.

"There is a cottage industry growing up around these kidnappings, with everyone claiming to have done this, and done that, and paid a ransom," says one US investigator familiar with Carroll's case. "No money was involved [for Carroll's release]. None was paid that we are aware of."

But the Monitor has new evidence to suggest that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) tried to negotiate a ransom payment. Some Iraqi investigators speculate that this was done on behalf of the US government.

When asked about a US ransom payment at a press conference on the day Carroll was released, US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad seemed to leave some wiggle room: "No US person entered into any arrangements with anyone. By US person, I mean the United States mission."

After two months in captivity, Carroll's chief captor ordered her to make two tearful videos - neither of which were made public - asking specifically for the help of UAE leader Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, as a "last chance" to save her life.

Abu Nour told Carroll that they had "talked to" Sheikh Khalifa, who had agreed to help. She was told of "negotiating for [the release of] more prisoners" with the UAE. But the first video disc was apparently put in the wrong type of disc drive and destroyed. So four days later, Carroll was forced to make another.

Those videos to the UAE proved worthless in the end, she says. As her captors brainstormed over the contents of the last propaganda video before her March 30 release, one of her captors piped up: "What about that dog, Khalifa?"

Abu Nour, her chief captor, agreed that they should have Carroll verbally attack the UAE leader on the video, emphasizing that he specifically failed to help her.

Carroll says that their anger at Sheikh Khalifa seemed genuine and she believes it stemmed from some kind of negotiation that went awry. "They told me to say that I had asked for the sheikh's help, and that he didn't help me - he refused."

UAE officials in Abu Dhabi and Washington, D.C., who were contacted by the Monitor did not return requests for comment on any videos sent to the UAE leader by Carroll's kidnappers, or whether the UAE had negotiated for her release.

A senior Iraqi official, who asked not to be identified because of concerns about damaging Iraq's relationship with the UAE, says there was a ransom negotiation with the UAE for Carroll, but that it fell apart in the week prior to her release. This official also says no ransom was paid for Carroll, and declined to discuss the matter further.

A story on the Arabic-language Kitabat.com website June 6 provided a great deal of detail about the UAE's possible involvement. But numerous confirmable details in the story were false. For example, the story claimed that the Monitor received an e-mail within a week of Carroll's abduction from her captors. The alleged e-mail said that "even if [Carroll] were proven innocent ... [of] being a collaborator with the American occupation," her freedom would cost $15 million.

The Monitor never received an e-mail or any other form of communication from Carroll's captors, says Richard Bergenheim, the Monitor's editor.

The high-brow Iraqi Web magazine, citing "trusted sources" in Iraq's Interior Ministry that were "confirmed by a high-ranking friend" in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, claimed that the kidnappers e-mailed the Monitor the contacts of UAE diplomat Naji al-Nuaimi, who was to act as an intermediary and courier in the alleged ransom plan. This, too, never happened, says Mr. Bergenheim.

Mr. Nuaimi ran the UAE Embassy's aid program in Iraq, which finances one of Baghdad's most modern hospitals. That would have given him a good cover for moving large sums. But the story claims the money was never handed over. The kidnappers, angry at Nuaimi, kidnapped him in retaliation on May 16 in Baghdad.

While much of the Kitabat story's claims are demonstrably false, the UAE lent credence to the notion that its diplomats have been involved in negotiations to free hostages. The day after Nuaimi's capture, a UAE official said the government hoped he "would be released unharmed because of the country's success in negotiating the release of foreigners taken hostage in Iraq."

Nuaimi was released May 30 and returned home to a hero's welcome.

Some analysts say that Iraqi politicians are claiming to have had a hand in Carroll's release to try to curry favor with the US or otherwise bolster their positions.

US government policy is to never pay ransom for hostages, though it can't stop individuals or private institutions from doing so. Besides making Americans greater targets in the future, such a payment also presents an ethical dilemma: Even if a hostage in Iraq is released, that cash would almost certainly be used to kill more American troops and other Iraqi civilians, or to snag more hostages.

"I really do believe that [Carroll] was released because of military pressure, and [arresting] people close to them," says one US investigator, noting the release of the three Christian Peacemakers Team hostages the week before. "They were getting desperate and didn't want to hold her anymore.... I never saw any evidence that money was involved."

Did someone pay a ransom? The list of 'benefactors' grows

At one point, Iraqi police sources told the Monitor that the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) had paid $10 million or $11 million for Jill Carroll's release. On March 30, she was dropped off outside an IIP office in Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood. The same police sources now say that they were mistaken, and no longer believe the IIP was involved.

Ms. Carroll's father, Jim, says that in early February - shortly after a third video aired on Al Rai TV in Kuwait - he spoke by phone with a man in Iraq who identified himself as Ahmed al-Sammarai. He spoke English, and told Jim that he had lived in Chicago. He told Mr. Carroll that he had contact with his daughter's kidnappers and that "the deal is done." Jim Carroll was elated, but surprised because it was the first indication that any negotiations were under way. But after two conversations, Jim could no longer reach Mr. Sammarai.

Carroll says that her captors became upset when the third video aired in Kuwait. The tape had been sent as a private proof of life to her family, but was somehow intercepted and broadcast.

IIP spokesman Iyad al-Sammarai, whom police officials had originally identified as a possible intermediary with the kidnappers, says neither he nor his party were ever involved in negotiations for Carroll's release. Sammarai speaks English, and used to live in Chicago. But he told the Monitor that he never spoke to Jim Carroll, and never had any contact with her kidnappers.

"There's a big difference between negotiations, which we didn't engage in, and sending messages,'' he says. "We thought that some people we knew might know the people who kidnapped her, and we sent messages urging her release. Whether those messages reached her kidnappers, we don't know."

Leads pursued during Carroll's captivity, by the Monitor and the Carroll family, in Jordan, Kuwait, and Baghdad, turned up one ransom demand of $30 million, and another for $15 million that quickly shifted to $100,000, and then $10,000 - just as a "fee" to receive proof that Carroll was alive. Other smaller claims came and went, most were determined to have been put forth by scammers.

For example, German police working with the FBI arrested a West African living in Muenster, after he sent an e-mail to David Cook, the Monitor's Washington bureau chief, allegedly promising to release Carroll in exchange for $2 million.

Sheikh Sattam Hamid Farhan al-Gaood insists he is responsible for Carroll's freedom. Mr. Gaood, a former business associate of Saddam Hussein, ran the "largest network of Iraqi front companies," according to the CIA's 2004 report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, to outwit the UN oil-for-food sanctions.

Gaood was detained by US soldiers 10 days after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, and labeled a "high value detainee," according to an Amnesty International appeal. He was released in December 2005 and fled to Jordan.

Gaood has since called attacks on US forces in Iraq "honest resistance." In February, he said that he could get Carroll released with a single phone call. He wanted the Carroll family to publicly ask for his help, which they subsequently did. Jill's father also established a telephone relationship with Gaood.

Iraqi police say US officials were misled about Gaood's influence with insurgents today. Still, in an ABC-TV interview after Carroll's release, in mid-April, Gaood said that "at the kidnappers' request," he had arranged "good donations" of up to $1 million to unspecified widows and orphans.

But his story also has some inconsistencies.

Gaood told his ABC interviewers off camera that he had alerted Carroll's family 10 hours before her release that she would be let go. The family says no one gave them prior notification of Jill's impending release.

Gaood also told the Carrolls that he played a role in the February release of a Jordanian Embassy driver kidnapped in Iraq - a falsehood, according to Jordanian sources.

Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi, who says he paid $1.5 million to have Carroll released, met with Gaood in early March in Amman, Jordan. But Mr. Dulaimi says, "We never talked about this [Carroll] case." As for Gaood's public claims about ransom? "Everything he says is lies. I am ready to go to Amman and tell [Gaood] he is a liar," Dulaimi says.

The evening of March 29, Katie Carroll went to a party with some of her friends. Earlier that day, she had gone on the Arab satellite television network, Al Arabiya, to plead for her sister's life.

When she got home that night, Katie imagined - as she had before - how great it would be if the phone would ring, and she would answer it, and it would be Jill, and this would all be over.

Just like that.

- P.G.

***

Little Hajar toddled away from the sagging bookcase holding a chapter of the Koran in her hand. She was heading for the foot-pedaled sewing machine, where a shiny candy wrapper had caught her attention.

She grabbed the wrapper, then showed me her treasures. She wasn't yet 2 years old and was so small that our eyes were at the same level as I sat cross-legged on the floor of the house west of Fallujah. I'd been here almost two weeks and March was almost over.

"What's that? What's that? Oooh, wow," I said, admiringly.

Hajar was great to play with despite the fact that her dress-and-jacket outfits were often smeared with yogurt or other messy food. Sometimes she'd bang on the door of my room to be let in. She was my only friend, the one person in this mujahideen household not responsible for my captivity.

This time, as the candy wrapper sparkled in her hand, the door suddenly opened. I looked up, expecting to see Hajar's mother or father coming to bring me tea or food as usual.

Instead, I glimpsed Abu Nour's visage as he entered. As always, the leader of these mujahideen had come out of nowhere, like an apparition. I cast my eyes to the ground, afraid he'd think I knew too much about his face.

Hajar collapsed into the velveteen of my dishdasha tunic and buried her face in it, afraid of this stranger.

"I know how ya feel, kid," I thought as I stroked her fine hair and small, motionless back.

What did Ink Eyes want? I hadn't seen him for three weeks. He'd promised then that he would release me in three days - a promise that had been just as worthless as the many other times he'd vowed I was on the brink of freedom.

I had learned to stop believing the promises, to protect myself from that terrible tease called hope.

I used to cling to every word Abu Nour said, analyzing them for days afterward for any hint of my fate. Now, after almost three months of captivity, I just didn't have the mental energy to do that anymore.

Instead, all I wanted was to minimize pain and have good days. A few minutes of playing with a child or helping women in the kitchen was an attainable goal. Seeing my family again - that was impossibly far away, a dream.

I stroked Hajar's hair, only half-listening to Abu Nour drone on. I just wished he would go so Hajar and I could resume our game.

"Well, today is Monday, and tomorrow is Tuesday," Abu Nour was saying. "So maybe in three days we'll let you go."

Twenty-four hours before my release he would return and we could have a final conversation about the mujahideen, he added.

I'd heard all this a million times.

"Oh thank you, sir," I said, trying to smile as he left.

"Yeah, right," I thought. "Don't listen to him. Don't get your hopes up, Jill. Just don't do it."

This was my theory: They were worried about my mental state. Since my bitter blow-ups with the Muj Brothers, Abu Qarrar and Abu Hassan, the mujahideen seemed to think I was fragile. Abu Nour hadn't seen me in awhile, and he had just come to say hello. Maybe he thought a dose of false hope would keep me from doing something drastic.

It was late March. "Dad's birthday is May 6," I thought. "If they let me out before May 6, that will be OK. That's all I really want."

Abu Nour had come on Monday. Tuesday was OK: I got to play with Hajar. Then Wednesday came around. I can't remember why, but I lost it.

I sobbed the whole day. Quietly, so they wouldn't hear me. I was so tired, so worn out. I'd been fooling myself, thinking some days were happy. It had been three months and I was drifting further and further away from my family, from my life. Enough was enough. "Let me out!" I screamed to myself. "Let me out!"

That night, I was sitting in my room in the dark, all upset. And I heard Abu Nour's voice.

They brought me into the sitting room after dinner. As always, I smelled his distinctive cologne before I saw him. Abu Nour sat cross-legged on the floor, his head bent toward the ground.

He had told me he was going to come back 24 hours before I was released.

"Tomorrow morning, we're going to let you go," he said. "We're going to drive you to the Iraqi Islamic Party and you will call your newspaper and you will be free."

I had no reaction. He might as well have said, "Here, have some tea."

Then came the catch: I needed to make one more video. And I needed to forget much of what he had told me about himself and his group, as well as much of what I had seen.

I had to forget about the Majlis, or council, of mujahideen that he had claimed to lead. I had to say his group was medium-sized, not big, not small.

"You can't talk about the women and children," said Ink Eyes. "You have to say you were in one room the whole time and ... you were treated very well."

I was supposed to "interview" him one last time, and he would tell me what I was supposed to say to the world. He handed me a notebook in which I was to write down his words.

"Anything outside the notebook is forbidden," he said.

Abu Nour wanted to make the video that night, but the power went out. So we made it in the morning. I didn't know then that within a day it would be on the Internet.

After the filming, they put me back in my little room. The night before, they'd told me that they would pay me for my computer, which they would keep, and that they would bring me a gift.

Abu Rasha, the large man who served as the head of the mujahideen cell I spent most of my time with, once had told me that when they let me go, they would give me a gold necklace, just as they had done for Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist who'd been kidnapped in Baghdad in early 2005 and held for a month.

I still wasn't excited. Money and gold, that was my ticket to freedom. I figured that if they did give me those things, then the end might truly be at hand.

Abu Nour said goodbye. I stammered out some kind of reply. Then I waited, and waited. Finally, the woman of the house rushed in with new clothes for me to wear. There weren't proper shoes, so she gave me her own black high-heeled patent leather sandals. They fit perfectly.

They rushed me into a car waiting outside. I still didn't have gold. I still didn't have money. I began to panic.

Abu Rasha was next to me in the back seat. He leaned over me, or so it felt, as I panted, blind, beneath three black scarves.

"Jill, we asked the Americans for the women prisoners and there were none," he said. Normally his voice was slow and quiet; now it was loud.

"Oh," I said, crouched in darkness, blind, hot, and breathless.

"And then we asked the government for money, and they gave us none," he said.

"Oh yes, I know," I said.

"Now we're going to kill you," he said, agitated and close to my head.

I thought they were going to do it. I imagined the gun. All they'd told me that day had been lies.

I knew I couldn't be afraid. I had to make them think they were good people who weren't capable of killing me.

I forced a laugh.

"No, Abu Rasha, you're my brother, you wouldn't do that!" I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

He laughed, more convincingly than me. "No, we're not going to kill you," he said. "We're going to take you to the Iraqi Islamic Party and drop you off."

I went limp. Tired, frozen, spent, I didn't know what was going on anymore. I couldn't make sense, couldn't analyze. I had nothing left.

We drove and drove and drove. They kept calling on cellphones to the car ahead, to make sure the way was clear. Finally, Abu Rasha told me to lift my scarves and keep my eyes straight down. He started placing $100 bills in my hand. For my computer, I got $400, and then another $400 for my trouble.

Then he said, "Oh yes, we got you this," and shoved a box into my narrow field of vision. He opened it and pulled out a gold necklace, with a pendant attached.

The money. The gold. Maybe they were really going to let me go.

We switched cars. I was in the front seat, with Abu Rasha driving. He began a monologue, angrier than anything I had ever heard from him. He spewed venom and expletives in English at the American military and government. He railed against the occupation, the war, and the Abu Ghraib prison.

I assured him that I wouldn't tell the US military or American government that I was free, and I meant it. I would only call my journalist friends to come get me and have them drive me to the airport.

I had spent nearly three months feverishly trying to convince my captors that I wasn't a CIA agent. If I was dropped off and immediately sought help from US officials, the mujahideen would assume that I really was a spy, I thought.

And I was afraid of what they then might do. The mujahideen had done everything they could to drill this message into my head over the past three months: They were omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. There was no escape from them, even in the Green Zone. Maybe not even in the US.

Abu Nour had once told me they had eyes everywhere, and that they'd be watching me after I was released. I'd long imagined a car bomb crashing into a military Humvee sent to collect me.

Then Abu Rasha pulled the car up to a curb. He handed me a note written in Arabic explaining who I was and told me to get out, lift my scarves, and walk a few hundred meters back.

The car door opened. It was Abu Qarrar, one of my Muj Brothers guards who'd appeared from nowhere. He handed me my gifts and a big bag full of all the clothes I'd accumulated over the last three months.

So my least favorite captor was the last one I saw. I said, "OK, Abu Qarrar, OK, goodbye, goodbye." Then I hauled away, tottering down the road in an insurgent's wife's high-heeled sandals, grappling with my stuff, scarves flapping in my face, an ex-hostage bag lady returning to the world.

I found the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) office and handed the man behind the desk the note. I was panicky, terrified, starting to shake. I just wanted to use the phone, I mumbled in Arabic.

Instead, the man ran to notify the manager of this IIP branch office. "The same journalist?!" the manager said incredulously after reading the note. Debate over what to do with me followed. I felt weak, lost. All I knew was that I wanted to call my hotel.

Things moved quickly after that. They tried to hustle me into a white car for a drive to IIP headquarters. I resisted; I just wanted the hotel. I asked again to use the office phone, but was told that none of them worked.

A cellphone appeared, with a call for me. It was Tariq al-Hashemi, the IIP leader, later to become the new government's vice president. I told Mr. Hashemi that I wanted him to call my hotel, and if no one from the Monitor was there, to call the Washington Post office and have them come get me. He said he would also call the US Embassy. I begged him not to, but he insisted.

After a few minutes, a convoy of white SUVs and trucks with flashing lights and gunmen roared into the driveway and streets around the office. The IIP officials brought me downstairs and hurried me into a bulletproof luxury vehicle, complete with leather seats. I realized it was Hashemi's personal security detail. The lights and guns and militarylike atmosphere terrified me.

I wanted to shout, "I don't want this!" as we zoomed away.

Things were going horribly wrong. The mujahideen were going to see me; they were going to kill us. They would think I lied, that I hadn't called my colleagues to come get me in a low-profile way. I doubled over in the seat, hiding below the ledge of the tinted windows.

A man sitting next to me laughed and said, "Why are you doing this?"

"I don't want them to see me," I said. Didn't he understand?! I wanted to shout at them to let me out, to stop, to make the cars with the flashing lights go away. We tore down Baghdad's streets, a giant screaming convoy with guns sticking out everywhere. I was terrified that every ordinary car we passed was a car bomb sent by the mujahideen to kill me for breaking my promise.

"Be careful of car bombs, be careful," I told the man driving in Arabic. I checked the location of the door lock and handle in case the vehicle went up in flames and I needed to get out in a hurry.

The guards looked bemused, as if I was crazy, and said not to worry.

For me, my release is one of the hardest memories of my captivity. I don't know why. Suddenly, my structure was gone. There was no one to tell me what to do.

My body was free, but my mind was not. I was conditioned to be whatever anyone around me wanted me to be. I had no opinions, no self-will. I didn't know how to make decisions.

The IIP headquarters was a blur. They wanted to make a video of me, and they had me write a letter of thanks and make an audio recording. This was strictly to ensure that no one would accuse them of being my kidnappers, they said. The video was then widely broadcast.

Two close friends from the Washington Post, including Ellen Knickmeyer, the Iraq bureau chief, showed up. Someone gave me a phone, and I called my twin sister, Katie.

***

At 5:45 A.M. on March 30, Katie was awakened by a ringing phone. She rolled over, looked at the caller ID, and saw that someone in Iraq was trying to reach her. In an instant, she knew.

They say that dreams come true, but seldom in life is it given to any of us to have such a perfect moment.

She grabbed the phone. "Katie, it's me," said the voice on the other end of the line. "I'm free." Jill and Katie both started to cry.

As the Carroll family's chief communicator, Katie immediately launched into contact mode, calling people on a predetermined list, working from the East Coast toward the West as the sun rose.

She didn't have to call her parents. Jim and Mary Beth Carroll got their own wake-up calls from Jill.

At the Monitor's headquarters in Boston, the news spread quickly. Editors began looking through the happiest of their premade plans, "Carroll Release Logistics."

In Cairo, staff writer Dan Murphy was having lunch with a journalist colleague. He and Scott Peterson had begun rotating in and out of Baghdad every few weeks. A friend from Reuters sent him an instant message: "Congratulations on Jill being free."

Mr. Murphy didn't believe it. After all, over the course of the past months he'd had nine or so false reports of Jill's freedom. He called back and told his friend nothing had happened. "No, man," his friend insisted, "we're just snapping it out of the States. 'The Christian Science Monitor confirms...' "

- P.G.

***

I made the video for the IIP. My state of mind was reflected in the fact that I felt guilty for delaying the start of filming so I could call members of my family.

I learned that Scott Peterson was still in Baghdad. I was sure he would have fled. I called him on Ellen's cellphone. He was at the CNN offices where he was working on a new set of public service videos about me.

I was still on the phone with Scott when the US military arrived. I was so afraid of the soldiers. "What should I do, Scott?" He told me if they were there, they were the surest way to safety. I hung onto my friend Ellen from the Post as we went downstairs.

We got into an armored vehicle. I still had my big bag of stuff. I figured the mujahideen were watching. They were watching everything.

The hatches closed. We were driving along, and I finally started to relax.

One of the soldiers pulled out a picture of me that he had been carrying with him. "I don't need this anymore," he said, and gave it to me.

Another pulled off a flag that was attached with Velcro to his uniform, and gave that to me, too.

A third, sitting to my left, said "We've been looking for you for a long time."

How did these men know who I was? I didn't understand why they had a picture of me. I had no idea how much coverage my kidnapping had received.

I sat and talked with Ellen. After a few minutes, she said, "You can take off your hijab now."

"No, no," I said.

I waited a minute. Then I said, "Well, actually ... I guess I can."

Monday: Epilogue

Abu Qarrar was young, rotund, and seemed new to the mujahideen lifestyle. He hadn't memorized much of the Koran, unlike his more senior counterparts. He sometimes sneaked glances at the women on the music-video channels when he thought no one was looking.

To show off, he would run in place, then kick his right leg in the air and fling his arms forward in an awkward demonstration of kung fu.

Abu Hassan was older, athletic, and seething with devotion to jihad. He seemed a veteran fighter - although, like Abu Qarrar, he loved the "Cat and Mouse" cartoons. Yes, they watched "Tom and Jerry."

When he was bored - which was often - he'd use his cellphone to record himself giving fake fiery sermons standing at the top of the stairs as if on a mosque pulpit. Then he'd play them back, to hear how he'd sound if he were a famous imam.

These two men were my most constant guards. They reported to Abu Ahmed, one of Abu Nour's lieutenants. Abu Ahmed was an Islamic scholar who had just finished an Arabic translation of a Henry Kissinger biography and was reading 'How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.

The two guards weren't at every house where I was held, and others came and went even when they were present. But during my captivity I spent more time with them than anyone else. They were my up-close-and-personal examples of the rank and file of the Iraqi mujahideen.

Abu Qarrar and Abu Hassan were also starkly different people, despite the fact that they called each other "brother." In this, they were symbolic of the contrasts I saw in the larger group of mujahideen.

Some members were clever; others, not so much. Some seemed dangerous; most were devout. A few were sympathetic. A few were educated. At least one of the women appeared bitter about her lot in life.

As far as I knew, all were native Iraqis.

As the weeks of my captivity turned into months, Abu Qarrar and Abu Hassan became tense and unhappy. They were bored with guard duty and tired of inaction. They became more petty and controlling toward me.

Meanwhile, I was increasingly desperate, fearful, and angry. I felt I was beginning to lose my self-control.

The result was conflict between me and the Muj Brothers which, if not for the context, might have seemed adolescent. We couldn't let little slights go. We were like animals in a cage, locked in all together.

***

The Feb. 26 deadline tied to the third video came and went. The kidnappers didn't call. They didn't write. They issued no new demands. But public interest in Jill Carroll's plight didn't flag. The Monitor's Team Jill had adopted a strategy early on to take a low-key US media response. They followed the advice of experts who had analyzed The Wall Street Journal's efforts to free Daniel Pearl after he was kidnapped in Pakistan: ignore the Western media, focus on Iraqi media. The kidnappers and ordinary Iraqis who might generate tips won't be watching Larry King.

Still, Jill's abduction struck a remarkable global chord. There was a series of "Free Jill" rallies in Paris. A giant poster of her was hung from the city hall in Rome. Students at the University of Massachusetts (where Jill went to school) and at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (where Jill grew up) held rallies and candlelight vigils. Thousands sent donations to a fund set up to support the family of Alan, Jill's Iraqi interpreter. A jazz song was composed in her honor. Paintings and poems were sent to the Monitor offices. And prayers were said at hundreds of churches, mosques, and synagogues around the United States.

A 45-year-old man from Fremont, Calif., was one of half a dozen Americans who offered to take Jill's place. "I would like to emphasize the fact that I am definitely not suicidal nor would I relish having my life cut short....

"I'm offering myself as a replacement for her as a hostage or even as a potential martyr for her outstanding work as a balanced and compassionate journalist," he wrote.

- P.G.

***

Abu Qarrar claimed to have been part of the team that abducted me, but if he was, I didn't see him. I do remember that he was the guard who sat outside the door of my bedroom on the first night I was held.

After all, he was hard to miss, with a girth that advertised his eating habits and a tattoo of Arabic writing on his inner left arm.

He told me he was 26. At the beginning of my ordeal he was unmarried. Later, he left for a period of time for an arranged wedding to a 13-year-old bride.

He didn't know what e-mail was. He'd never seen a computer. He marveled at how a can opener worked. There were times when we got along well. But overall I thought he acted like a spoiled little boy who enjoyed his authority over another human being - namely, me.

I learned this early on. During the first full day of my captivity, he kept peeking in the door, presumably to make sure I wasn't trying to escape. I'd heard that it was best for hostages to try to make captors see them as human beings, to elicit sympathy, so I tried talking to him. I asked him to help me with my Arabic.

I would point to things, and he would tell me their Arabic names. I was open, even friendly. That turned out to be a big mistake.

You can't be that way with men in such a conservative culture. They often take it the wrong way. He began to get demanding, even assertive. At one point, the pin on my hijab came loose, and I started to pin it back up.

Abu Qarrar demanded, "No, open."

I looked down and whispered, "No."

He repeated, "Open!" He looked at me with wide eyes, very serious.

To Westerners this may sound like an innocuous exchange, but in the context of the conservative Middle East, this was a totally inappropriate advance. I needed to shut him down completely. I put my head down, held my hands in my lap, and didn't move a muscle.

Finally he left and closed the door and locked it. He returned every hour or so, and I wouldn't even look at him. I'd just sit there.

Abu Hassan I met later. He was older - about 32, I would guess - and married with children. Where Abu Qarrar was unathletic, Abu Hassan was trim and fit. He told me he'd been a gym teacher. For some reason I got the impression he'd been in Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard.

At first I found him to be the more sympathetic of the Muj Brothers. His age made him seem more mature, or at least more responsible. Later I saw that by guarding me, he was being confined as well. Desperate as he was for action, he would get cabin fever in minutes. Then he'd pace, reciting the fatiha, the opening chapter of the Koran.

The relationship of the Muj Brothers to each other was not one of equals. At times, Abu Hassan treated Abu Qarrar as if he were an insurgent's apprentice.

For instance, the older man taught the younger how to clear the chamber of his handgun and remove its clip. This was good for my safety, as Abu Qarrar would often point his handgun at me and pretend to shoot, for fun.

Abu Hassan used to go out at night sometimes to plant IEDs. Then in daylight he'd go out again, to detonate them. One day, when we were at the insurgent's "clubhouse," as I called it, he decided he would have to wait before leaving to set off his explosives. There were too many American soldiers in the vicinity, he said.

So Abu Qarrar decided he would act the part of the mujahideen hero. He grabbed a black-and-white checked kaffiyeh, the common Arabic head covering favored by insurgents, threw it over his shoulders in a dramatic swoop, and declared that he would set off to fight the Americans, no matter what.

Like a teacher facing a rebellious student, Abu Hassan grabbed Abu Qarrar by the shoulders and snatched away the kaffiyeh over Abu Qarrar's loud objections. The younger man wasn't going to be allowed to pick his own battles. And Abu Hassan recognized the kaffiyeh for what it was, a giant flashing sign to any US soldier that as much as said, "Shoot me! I'm a muj!"

Blind again under the black scarves - a now familiar routine after one and a half months in captivity - I was herded into a car, headed for yet another change of houses. I didn't know who the two men in the front seat were until I heard a voice I barely recognized, due to the speaker's exhaustion.

"Abu Rasha is very tired. It was a very busy day," said Abu Nour's No. 2, speaking in the third person, as night fell like its own black scarf on the world outside.

Abu Rasha was a large man, one of the organizers of my guards. His house in Baghdad - or what I took to be his house - was one of the first places I'd been taken after being kidnapped. I'd spent a lot of time in his presence. But I'd never encountered him in a state like this.

"Today was very, very bad," he said. "All day, driving here, and driving there, with the PKC and the RPG," he said, referring to Russian-made machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, which were among the insurgents' most common weapons. It had been a day of hard fighting. But they hadn't been confronting US or Iraqi soldiers. Today, they had had a different target: Shiites.

Two days earlier, on Feb. 22, an important Shiite mosque in Samarra, Iraq, had been blown up. Shiites had attacked Sunni mosques in retaliation - the result being a vicious cycle of attack-and-response that had altered the world of my Sunni Islamist kidnappers.

We arrived back at the place I called the "clubhouse," near Abu Ghraib, later that night. Slumped in a plastic chair in a room lit by the stark half-light of a fluorescent camping lantern, another mujahid told me their new bottom line.

"Aisha," he said, calling me by the Sunni nickname they'd given me, "now our No. 1 enemy are the Shias. Americans are No. 2."

***

As editor of the Monitor, Richard Bergenheim was the person who spoke to contacts who required special handling. That meant, for instance, that if FBI Director Robert Mueller called, he answered. And Mr. Mueller did call, early on, to ask if the Monitor was getting the help it needed.

It also meant that as the Jill Carroll hostage crisis dragged on, Mr. Bergenheim found himself at the center of the strange case of Daphne Barak and Sheikh Sattam Hamid Farhan al-Gaood (also spelled Gaaod). The Monitor was simply pursuing every lead, but this would be quite a rabbit hole.

On her website, Daphne Barak describes herself as "one of the few leading A-list interviewers in the world." An Israeli-American syndicated television journalist, her interviewees have included everyone from Hillary Clinton to members of pop star Michael Jackson's family.

Mr. Gaood, to some US officials, isn't so much a celebrity as he is notorious. "One of Saddam Hussein's most trusted confidants in conducting clandestine business transactions," according to the CIA's 2004 report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The same report said Gaood was once the director of El Eman, the "largest network of Iraqi front companies" that smuggled oil out of Iraq and foodstuffs into Iraq in violation of the UN oil-for-food program, but "he has stated that he believed this to be legitimate business."

Sometime in late January, a source at a US television network told the Monitor that Ms. Barak was trying to sell an interview she'd conducted with Gaood - and that Gaood had mentioned helping get Jill Carroll out.

So Bergenheim called Barak. The story was true - or, at least, the part about the interview was.

Gaood had said, in an offhand way, that kidnapping was wrong, and Jill should be released. Pressed, he'd said something to the effect of, yes, he could arrange her freedom, he'd even use his own money, if needed - but so far, no one had asked him to.

- P.G.

***

The wave of sectarian violence which overtook Iraq following the destruction of Samarra's Askariya Shrine had a huge impact on the nature of my captivity.

That was because the level of activity of the mujahideen group which had seized me greatly increased. Many of its members were out fighting their new war almost every day.

At first, I thought this was a bad thing for me. It was destabilizing the status quo - and under the status quo, at least I was still alive.