The Devil's Feather

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›››Associated Press

›››Wednesday, 19 May 2004, 13:17 GMT 14:17 UK

›››Filed by James Wilson, Baghdad, Iraq

Reuters Correspondent Released

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Police have issued a description of the driver. “The car was hijacked minutes before it collected Co

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The armed group holding Ms. Bianca issued the following statement. “The fate of Adelina Bianca will be decided by the Prime Minister of Italy. While he gives sustenance to American soldiers to occupy the sacred land of Iraq, the mothers of his country will receive only coffins from us. The dignity of Muslim men and women is not redeemed except by blood and souls.”

It is now over a week since Adelina was taken hostage, but the passing of Monday’s deadline for her execution offers a glimmer of hope. There is considerable concern among moderate Iraqi religious leaders that the escalating brutality of hostage-takers is further damaging Islam in the eyes of the world. “Islam does not wage war on i

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I WATCHED ADELINA’S release on the television in my parents’ flat after the crowd of reporters and photographers who’d thronged their road finally departed. By that time, a week after I’d left Baghdad, my own story was dead. I’d eluded the Reuters welcoming committee at Heathrow, failed to show up for a press conference and buried myself in an anonymous hotel in London as Maria

God knows what the hotel made of me. The only request I made of them was the address and telephone number of the nearest STD clinic. Otherwise, I wouldn’t let the chambermaids into the room, smoked like a chimney, spent hours in the bath and ate only when my father ordered sandwiches on room service. I put on a good show for him whenever he appeared, but I could see it concerned him that I only ate crumbs.

The story I gave him for my refusal to meet the press was the same as Dan had offered in Baghdad: I didn’t want to speak publicly about my captivity for fear of jeopardizing Adelina’s chances. For his private peace of mind, I told him I’d been blindfolded throughout and had never seen my captors, but had been treated reasonably despite being terrified.

I don’t know if he believed me. My mother certainly didn’t when he smuggled me into the flat at three o’clock one morning. She was shocked at how much weight I’d lost, worried by my preference for darkened rooms and deeply suspicious of my refusal to talk to anyone, particularly Dan Fry in Baghdad and Reuters in London. However, as I locked myself in the spare bedroom every time she tried to question me, my father put pressure on her to let me deal with things in my own way.

Adelina Bianca was my single excuse. As long as she remained in captivity I had a reason for keeping quiet, so it was with mixed emotions that I watched her uncertain steps on television as she emerged from a mosque in Baghdad, dressed in a heavy black chador. Beside her was the imam who had negotiated her freedom. She was so hidden beneath the veil that I couldn’t read anything from her face, but her voice was strong as she thanked everyone who’d helped her. She denied that the Italian government had paid a ransom.

Twenty-four hours later I sat glued to the set again as she gave a press conference in Milan. It was a bravura performance which left me ashamed of my own inability to talk about what had happened to me. I didn’t have Adelina’s courage.

AS SOON AS ADELINA was released, I scoured websites for rented property in the West Country. Of course my mother was unhappy about it, particularly when I told her I pla

Once again, my father stepped in. “Let her be,” he said firmly. “If she doesn’t know her own mind at thirty-six, then she never will. Some wounds only heal in fresh air.”

I could-probably should-have told them the truth, and I wonder now why I didn’t. I was their only child and we had a close and supportive relationship despite the often huge distances between us. But my father had so many regrets about abandoning the farm in Zimbabwe that I hesitated to burden him with mine. If he hadn’t been married, he’d have stayed put and barricaded the house out of bloody-mindedness, but my mother forced his hand after one of their neighbours was murdered by Mugabe’s Zanu-PF thugs.

My father never forgave himself for what he saw as capitulation. He felt he should have fought harder for what his family had bought and built, and what was rightfully his. He landed a reasonably paid job in London with a South African wine importer, but he hated the insularity of England, the claustrophobia of city life and the modest rented flat in Kentish Town that was a quarter the size of their farmhouse outside Bulawayo.

I take after my mother in looks, tall and blonde, and my father in character, determinedly independent. On the face of it, my mother appears the least secure of the three of us, yet I wonder if her willingness to admit fear shows that she’s the most self-assured. For my father, ru