My truth (La
mia verità)
By Giuliana Sgrena
07 March,2005
Il Manifesto
March 6, 2005 I am still in the darkness. Last Friday
was the most dramatic day of my life since I was abducted.
I had just spoken
with my abductors, who for days kept telling me I would be released.
So I was living in wait. They said things that I would understand only
later. They talked of transfer related problems. I had learned to understand
which way the wind blew from the attitude of my two "sentinels,"
the two fellows who watched over me every dayespecially one of
them, who attended to my requests, was incredibly bold. In the attempt
to understand what was going on, I provocatively asked him if he was
happy because I would go away or because I would stay. I was surprised
and happy when, for the first time, he told me, "I only know you
will go, but I don't know when."
To confirm that
something new was happening, at one point they both came in the room
to reassure me and joke: "Congratulations," they said, "you
are leaving for Rome." To Rome, that's what they were saying.
I had a weird feeling,
because that word immediately evoked liberation but also projected a
void inside myself. I realized it was the most difficult moment of my
abduction and that if all I had lived yet was certain, now an abyss
of heavy uncertainties was widening. I changed my clothes.
They came back:
"We'll escort you, but don't give signals of your presence, otherwise
the Americans might intervene." That was not what wanted to hear.
It was the happiest and also the most dangerous moment. If we ran into
someone, meaning American troops, there would be an exchange of fire,
and my captors were ready and they would have responded. I had to have
my eyes covered. I was already getting used to a temporary blindness.
About what happened
outside, I only knew that in Baghdad it had rained. The car ran safely
in a muddy area. There was the driver and the same old abductors. I
soon heard something I didn't want to hear. A helicopter flying low
over the area we had stopped in. "Don't worry, now they will come
look for you . . . within ten minutes they will come." They had
spoken Arabic all the time, some French and much broken English. Now
they spoke in this way, too.
Then they got out
of the car. I stayed in that condition of immobility and blindness.
My eyes were stuffed with cotton, and covered by sunglasses. I was motionless.
I thought . . . what do I do? Should I start counting the passing seconds
to another condition, the one of freedom? I had just started counting
when I heard a friendly voice: "Giuliana, Giuliana, this is Nicola,
don't worry, I've talked to Gabriele Polo, don't worry, you're free."
He took my cotton
blindfold and sunglasses off. I felt relieved, not for what was going
on, which I didn't understand, but for Nicola's words. He kept talking
nonstop, he was uncontainable, a flood of friendly words and jokes.
I finally found comfort, almost physically, a warm comfort I had long
since forgotten.
The car proceeded
on its way, through an underpass full of puddles, almost skidding to
avoid them. We engaged in incredible laughter. It was relieving. Skidding
along a road full of water in Baghdad and maybe have a bad car crash
after all I had experienced would not be really explainable. Nicola
Calipari sat by my side. The driver had notified the embassy and Italy
twice that we were heading to the airport, which I knew was controlled
by the American troops. It was less than one kilometre, they told me
. . . when. . . . I remember only fire. At that point a rain of fire
and bullets came at us, forever silencing the happy voices from a few
minutes earlier.
The driver started
shouting we were Italians, "We are Italians! We are Italians .
. ." Nicola Calipari dove on top of me to protect me and immediately,
and I mean immediately, I felt his last breath as he died on me. I must
have felt physical pain, I didn't know why. But I had a sudden thought:
I recalled my abductors' words. They said they were deeply committed
to releasing me, but that I had to be careful because "the Americans
don't want you to return." Back then, as soon as they had said
that, I had judged their words to be meaningless and ideological. In
that moment such words risked to take the taste of the most bitter truth
away. I can't tell the rest yet.
This was the most
dramatic moment. But the month I spent as a kidnap victim has probably
changed my life forever. One month alone with myself, prisoner of my
deepest belief. Each hour was a pitiless test of my work. Sometimes
they kidded me. They even asked me why I would leave and asked me to
stay. I pointed out that I had personal relationships. They led me to
think to such priorities that too often we put aside.
"Ask for your
husband's help," they told me. And I did so in the first video,
the one I think you all have watched. My life has changed. Same as Ra'ad
Ali Abdulaziz's, the Iraqi engineer from "Un Ponte per" who
was abducted with Simona & Simona. "My life is no longer the
same," he told me. I didn't understand. Now I know what he meant.
Because I have experienced the hardness of the truth, I realize the
difficulty of communicating it, and the weakness of trying to.
In the first days
of my abduction I didn't shed a single tear. I was simply mad. I told
them directly: "How can you abduct me, if I am against the war?"
And they started a fierce debate. "Yes, because you want to speak
to the people, we would never abduct a reporter who stays shut in the
hotel. And then the fact you say you're against the war could be a cover
up." I would reply, almost provoking them: "It's easy to abduct
a weak woman like me, why don't you do it to the American officers?"
I insisted that they couldn't ask the Italian government to withdraw
its troops; that they had to address the Italian people who were and
are against the war, not Italian government.
It was a month of
ups and downs, moments of hope and moments of deep depression. Like
when the first Sunday after my abduction, in the Baghdad house where
I was prisoner and where there was a satellite television dish, they
let me see the EuroNews. I saw my poster on the Rome city hall building.
I was relieved. Soon after, however, a claim from the Jihad announced
I would be executed if Italy didn't withdraw its troops. I was frightened.
But they reassured me that it wasn't them, that people should have mistrusted
those proclamations, that they were a "provocation." I often
asked the one who seemed more approachable and who looked more like
a soldier: "Tell me the truth, you will kill me". Nonetheless,
many times, we talked. "Come see a movie on TV," they told
me, while a Wahhabi woman, covered from head to foot, hung around the
house taking care of me.
The abductors seemed
a very religious group, constantly praying the Koran verses. But on
Friday, at the time of my release, the one who seemed the most religious
and who used to wake up at 5 o'clock every morning to pray, "congratulated"
me and incredibly shook my handit is not a usual behaviour for
an Islamic fundamentalistadding "If you behave, you'll leave
soon." That was followed by a rather humorous episode. One of my
two guards came to me astonished because the TV showed my photographs
displayed in European towns and also on Totti. Yes, Totti (the Rome
football team player, T.N.). The guard said he said he was a Rome team
fan and he was amazed that his favourite player had taken to field with
"Free Giuliana" on his T-shirt.
I now live with
no more certainties. I find myself deeply weak. I failed in my belief.
I had always claimed there was need to go tell about that dirty war.
And I had to decide whether to stay in the hotel or going out and chance
being abducted because of my work. "We don't want anyone any more,"
the abductors told me. But I wanted to tell about the bloodbath in Falluja
through the refugees' tales. And that morning the refugees and some
of their "leaders" didn't listen to me. I had in front of
me the evidence of what the Iraqi society has become with the war and
they threw their truth in my face: "We don't want anyone. Why don't
you stay home? What such interview can be useful for?". The worst
collateral damage, the war killing communication, was falling on me.
On me, who had risked it all, challenging the Italian government that
didn't want reporters gong to Iraq, and the Americans who don't want
our work that gives witness to what that country has really turned into
with the war, despite what they call elections.
Now I wonder. Is
their refusal a failure?
This article was
orinally published in Il Manifesto and translated by Eva Milan, ZabrinskyPoint