Inside the vehicle, the men zip-tied my wrists and ankles, and blindfolded me. I kept asking them: Why? I had been working in Iraq as a journalist for more than a decade.

I had documented Iraq’s fight against the Islamic State from the front lines as a freelancer—at my own expense and at great risk. I had covered social, political, economic, and environmental issues, and had been welcomed into the homes of many Iraqi families whose stories I tried to tell with sensitivity and fairness. Why, I asked these men in Arabic, had they taken me?

Why were they hurting me? What purpose did this serve?“No speak!” one yelled, in what was apparently the only English he knew. He continued punching me on my side and my back.

Something was pulled over my head—a bag or hood—that made it hard for me to breathe and move. The beating continued, viciously, as I was shoved to the floor behind the driver’s seat. My dress had been pulled up above my waist.

I began praying softly in Arabic, which led to more pounding and my first loss of consciousness.At one point, I was pulled out of a vehicle. My knees scraped across the ground. The stockings I was wearing would later be used to blindfold me; throughout my detention, they remained crusty with blood.

I don’t remember being carried into the building where I would be held. I came to when I heard a voice asking where I should be dropped: “On the mattress?”“Yes.”I heard sounds that made me think we were still in an urban area. My legs were spread and my body was searched.

I was in excruciating pain from what I later learned were several broken ribs, but I tried not to cry out; I had been told that I would be killed if I made any noise. Then I heard a voice that, in its humanity, offered me the slightest bit of hope.“But she’s a woman,” this man said. He felt, or I imagined he felt, a touch of shame or pity.

Perhaps he could see, in my agonized self, some trace of a woman he had known and loved.I was taken hostage on March 31. Earlier in the day, I had stopped by an outdoor tea place where older men chat and network; an Iraqi journalist I knew was sitting there, and had spotted me walking past and waved me over. I then went back to my budget hotel, and changed into heels and more formal clothes.

I had a meeting with an Iraqi government official whom I had known for years but had not seen for a while; I had arrived back in Baghdad only the week before. It was when I was trying to get a taxi to go to that meeting that I was grabbed off the street.I had been warned multiple times over my years of reporting from Iraq that I might be targeted for kidnapping or assassination. However, this is always a risk for journalists who work on the ground, and none of the previous warnings had been followed by any attempts.

I have never traveled with security—not in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or elsewhere. I have always walked or used local transportation, and often stay with local families.I had, however, known Iraqis who had been kidnapped or killed in Baghdad, allegedly by militias. I also knew that the Iran-linked militia Kataib Hezbollah was widely believed to have been behind several such incidents.

But I could not know for certain whether this was the group that had taken me. And in those first hours and days, I had little energy to speculate. I was in immense pain and too focused on staying alive.I don’t know how long I was held in the first location—a few days, probably.

I was in a narrow, windowless cell of sorts, with a heavy door and a video camera that filmed me at all times. I remained shackled, and was taken out only a few times—always blindfolded—to use the bathroom in another part of what seemed to have once been someone’s home. To get in and out of the cell, I had to crawl through an opening in the door that was about a meter high.

During one long stretch, no one came to open it. I was forced to urinate in the cell and wonder if I had been left there to die.My captors would tell me nothing beyond that I was in “detention,” that I was in the “hands of the security forces,” and that, if I was innocent, I would be “released in a few days.”At one point, having been left for many hours, I woke to a sort of booming sound, and then heard something heavy being moved outside the door. The crawl space opened, and a man entered, while another crouched just outside, wielding a knife.

They said to do what I was told “for my own safety,” and to not speak a word. Blindfolded again with my bloody stockings, and with my wrists and ankles bound, I was dragged out and deposited in the trunk of a vehicle. I was moved to a second and then a third vehicle