The Disappeared of Iraq

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There was very little beating, and the emir barely even spoke with him, but Waddah says it was the scariest episode of his captivity. As he sat on the floor, the emir and two assistants had a discussion about how to convince his family that he was still alive. One of them suggested that, as proof of life, they cut off a body part and send it to the family. There was a long debate about which part to cut: a finger, an ear, his nose or his penis. Finally, during a lull in the discussion, Waddah pointed out that his family members were unlikely to recognize any of his body parts. "They will just think you're sending them some dead guy's finger to scare them," he said. To his relief, the kidnappers saw the sense in this. The emir decided to wait until the man in Fallujah came up with the phone number.

A week later he was taken up to the interrogation room for what would be his last visit. There was still no phone number, so the interrogators said they would videotape Waddah and send the tape to his family. His hood was removed, and he was ordered to sit still and say nothing--to simply look at the camera. Expecting to be beaten, he was surprised that the filming ended in a few minutes and that nobody laid a hand on him. "They said, 'This is your last hope. If this doesn't convince your family, there is nothing else we can do,'" he says.

Within days, a package was tossed into the front yard of his family's home in Baghdad. It was the videotape: grainy images of a silent Waddah, staring at the camera, followed by a short speech by a masked man asking for $100,000. Haseeba was overjoyed. The ransom demand was obviously far beyond the family's means. But while they waited for the kidnappers to make contact to negotiate the sum, Haseeba began to collect the money. Once again, the family went to the cousins and uncles in Fallujah and Ramadi, this time to ask for money. Again they dug into their savings, collectively raising $25,000. Haseeba and her daughters-in-law sold all their jewelry, and Mohammed flogged a pair of old British-made hunting rifles he had inherited from his father. With the permission of the cousin who owned it, they even sold the midnight blue Chevrolet Lumina for a knocked-down price. Even so, they were able to get the collection up to only $40,000.

The next time they heard from the kidnappers, it was on Mohammed's cell phone--the contact in Fallujah had finally delivered the number. Haseeba took the call, beseeching the kidnappers to lower their price. "I said, 'I am like your mother. Have pity on me,'" she says. The caller asked to speak with Mohammed and told him, "We don't like to negotiate with old women. Don't let your mother answer the phone again." But Haseeba's pleas had worked. The next morning the kidnappers called again to say the family should have the $40,000 ready for collection. That evening a white Toyota Camry stopped at the family's front gate, and an old man entered, introducing himself as a tribal sheik from Anbar province. He said he had been asked to collect some money, adding, "I don't know what it is for, and I don't want you to tell me."