Download American Hostage: A Memoir of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq and the Remarkable Battle to Win His Release AudioBook Free
A rare and powerful story of hope, love, survival, and the battle to bring back alive a hostage in Iraq
Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carleton were journalists and filmmakers employed in Iraq on a documentary about the looting of the country's legendary archaeological sites, using their Iraqi translator Amir Doshi. In the late summer of 2004, they started out to wrap up their work, and Marie-Helene returned home while Micah remained for a final two weeks of filming. As Micah and Amir were filming in a Nasiriyah market, something went horribly wrong: Micah, who wore a bushy mustache and was dressed in Iraqi clothing, was unmasked as a foreigner and kidnapped by militants in southern Iraq.
Home in NY, Marie-Helene awoke to a gut-wrenching telephone call from Micah's mother with word of his abduction. She promised Micah's mother the impossible--that together they might bring Micah back alive.
"American Hostage" is the remarkable memoir of Micah Garen's harrowing abduction and survival in captivity, as well as the heroic and successful struggle of Marie-Helene; Micah's sister, Eva; along with relatives and buddies to win Micah's and Amir's release from other captors. The entire world watched and waited as Micah's drama unfolded, but the authors, now safely home and engaged to be married, detail the dramatic untold story.
After learning of Micah's abduction, Marie-Helene took a risky and unusual step: instead of counting on the authorities to rescue Micah, she used her recent experience in Iraq to create a massive grassroots effort to attain out to Micah's captors and plead for his release. As fighting between Coalition forces and the Mahdi Army raged in Najaf, Micah and Amir became pawns in a terrible political game. The kidnappers released a video threatening to kill Micah unless america withdrew from Najaf within forty-eight hours. In response, Marie-Helene's and Micah's families redoubled their efforts, eventually sending a representative to Nasiriyah to lobby for Micah.
While Marie-Helene done his release, Micah, imprisoned alongside Amir under armed guard deep in the marshes of southern Iraq, lived the nightmare of a hostagehaunted by the alternating impulses of hope and despair, his desire for survival and plans of escape. His experience reveals a great deal about the lives and minds of militants in southern Iraq.
"American Hostage" is an engrossing and rare story of how hope, love, and communal effort can overcome war, distance, and cultural variations in Iraq.
