This article was published in The New York Times Magazine on 1'st October 2006 with cooperation with Mr. Fred Heeren.

I wanted to make a difference. After earning my Ph.D. in engineering in 2002 at Baghdad University, I became a guest lecturer there, and I also began working for an Italian humanitarian organization — helping to repair schools, water-treatment plants and hospitals. I didn’t stop working in 2003 when the American bombs started falling, and I didn’t stop when friends warned me that my work was bad because it made the foreigners look good. That was nothing new. Even before the war, most Iraqis believed that all visiting Westerners were working against Islam.
But then one afternoon in September 2004, when I was drawing up plans for local schools, one of my co-workers rushed into my Baghdad office looking worried — followed by a man in a military uniform carrying an AK-47. His comrades chose me along with two Italian colleagues, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, and pushed us out into the road. They handcuffed us and forced us into a caravan of waiting cars. I hardly had time to feel afraid. I asked the driver what was happening. He told me to be quiet and yelled out the window at the gathering crowd: “We are police! Go home! Or I’ll shoot anyone standing in the street!” He waved his pistol around. People scattered.
I tried to focus. This was not a police investigation; it was a kidnapping. Iraqis taken with foreigners are usually the first to die. The day before, I celebrated my 35th birthday. I wondered how my life would end — with a bullet or a knife.
Other uniformed men put me on the floor and draped a blanket over me, and we drove away. As we passed checkpoints and I sweated under the blanket in 110-degree heat, I somehow remembered a film I had seen about the history of nonviolent movements. I decided that no matter what they did to me, I would try to behave gently in return. When a gust blew the blanket off my head, I told them about it — and one of the men actually thanked me as he pulled the blanket back over me.
But when they interrogated me at a house later, things looked very bad. They asked me about my background. I knew they wouldn’t like the truth, but I decided to be straight with them: my father was Kurdish, my mother Arabic. Every answer made them angrier. “Are you Sunni or Shiite?” They were Sunnis, but I said I was a Muslim who didn’t believe in breaking up Islam that way. They accused me of being a spy for the Italians. I told them I was just helping to rebuild our country.
“Admit it,” they said, “you are working against Islam!” I explained again. Finally, one pressed his gun against my head. “We know you are lying. In five seconds you must say that you are working for the Americans or the church!”
The room went silent. But I felt sure they knew I was telling the truth. Now they were playing with me, and I decided to let them know I understood. So. . .I began to smile. I was blindfolded, so I couldn’t tell how they were reacting — what if I had misjudged them? — but after a moment, they burst out laughing. Tensions disappeared. One of them tapped me lightly on the head, saying, “You make jokes for us!”
I passed that test, but each day brought new threats to our lives. The first night, a rival militant group attacked us with grenades and machine guns. Another day the emir of our group said that if their ransom demands were not met in 48 hours, they planned to execute us — “probably by beheading.” During those 48 hours, I just kept thinking about my 4-year-old son. But the deadline came and went — and the emir had a new idea: the Italian hostages and I would lead an attack against American troops. The assault would be broadcast on Arabic TV. I had to translate between the Italian pacifists and the radicals, who seemed ready to kill us if we declined. This surreal discussion went on for days. And then suddenly, after three weeks, we were released.
We were driven to the back of a Baghda