A Joyous Return

8 minute read
JEFF ISRAELY | Rome

The world got to know them by their first names, kept vigil for them, and for two long days feared they’d been murdered. In a place of so much violence and death, the two Simonas — Italian aid workers Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29 — put themselves in the service of life. They moved to Iraq to rebuild schools, train teachers and distribute water and medicine. For that, on Sept. 7, they were snatched from their Baghdad office in broad daylight and held hostage, along with Mahnaz Bassam, 27, and Ra’ad Ali Abdul Aziz, 35, Iraqi employees of their Rome-based group, A Bridge to Baghdad. Posters of the two Simonas sprang up across Italy, but after two weeks of hoping and praying, a militant website said they had been beheaded. The next day another website claimed that a video of the execution would be released.

Then, as if by miracle, the Simonas reappeared last week, exhausted but radiant as they returned to a jubilant Rome in long, matching Iraqi dresses. Their colleagues were also set free. Not content to bask in a hero’s welcome home, Torretta chose to speak out: she opposes the U.S.-led occupation, wants Italy to pull its more than 2,700 troops out, and raised eyebrows by telling an Italian newspaper that “the guerrilla war is justified.” In an interview with Time she clarified her stance. “Saddam was a brutal dictator — we didn’t want him in power — but now that he is gone it’s time for the occupiers to leave,” she said. “The Geneva protocols say citizens have the right to oppose an occupying force. But kidnappings, beheadings, suicide-bomb attacks like the one that just killed 35 children — these are inhuman and brutal and have nothing to do with resistance. I’m a pacifist.” Whether or not you agree with her words, you have to respect her deeds. The Simonas are heroes not because they were taken hostage and released (allegedly because of a $1 million ransom paid by the Italian government, though Rome denies it), but because of their brave, good works. They heeded a quiet voice that told them: don’t mind the danger, go where the suffering is. “With just a little bit of effort,” Pari explains, “you can help make things better.”

During an hour-long interview with Time at A Bridge to Baghdad’s headquarters in Rome’s Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, the bustling center of the city’s immigrant community, the Simonas explain what drew them to Iraq — and why they stayed when so many others were pulling out. “I do this for two reasons,” says Pari, a bright-eyed Bologna native who worked for Save the Children in Afghanistan and the Balkans before moving to Iraq in 2003. “I have a lot of fun doing it; and I believe in human rights. So many people are denied the fundamental rights we all deserve.” The people they help aren’t abstractions; they’re friends. “It’s work we do with them, not for them,” says Torretta, a Roman who first worked in Iraq in 1994, has spent most of the past five years there, and in 2003 became chief of Baghdad operations for the aid group, which was established in 1991 to help alleviate the effects of the economic embargo on Iraqis. “We talk with families, religious leaders and even the children to find out what they think should be done.”

Torretta has a steely charisma. Pari, with her big blue eyes and slender frame, can seem more of an ingenue, but in person shows a tough, tested confidence. In the past six months, the women say, they watched the situation in Iraq slide into chaos. “There’s a part of the country that’s hostile to the reconstruction,” says Torretta, “which makes our kind of work much harder. But there are also more people in need. They felt close to us, and we could feel their affection. That’s why we stayed. We were a part of their lives in the good and the bad. We lived with the same security risk that all Iraqis lived with. We became part of the place. Without falling into sentimentalism — we had our work to do — we developed relationships and made friends. It’s not easy to leave.” When Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni was taken hostage and killed in August, “it was a shock,” says Torretta. “And we were trying to think lucidly about whether it was O.K. to stay.” But still they felt safe. “We weren’t Italian or Western,” says Pari. “We were Simona and Simona.”

On Sept. 7, 20 gunmen burst into their Baghdad office. “I thought: They’ve arrived,” says Torretta. The men forced them into the back of a car and covered their eyes and mouths with tape. They rode for three or four hours. “We didn’t know if they wanted to kill us right away or not,” says Torretta. They were taken into a small house and questioned for hours, as the hostage takers demanded to know who they worked for, if they used U.S. funds, what they thought of Islam and the occupation. At one point, a man held a knife to Torretta’s throat. But day by day, their treatment improved. They didn’t know it, but Baghdad residents were holding demonstrations on their behalf. Slowly, the women say, the captors’ attitude toward them softened. The Simonas told the men about the school they’d rehabilitated near Sadr City, and the convoys they’d organized to bring water to the besieged residents of Fallujah and Najaf. The men started bringing them more and better food: “We joked that it was like staying in a five-star hotel,” says Torretta. But the women never stopped thinking about their anguished families back home, or worrying that they might be killed. “We never knew their ultimate intentions. The fear was there from the beginning to the end. Always.”

After 21 days in captivity, the gunmen again put the Simonas into a car. But this time, the women realized, they were being set free. They say they have no idea whether a ransom was paid; if so, they don’t approve, because ransoms will fuel more kidnappings. “I’m not sure why we were released,” says Torretta. “But I think the work we did contributed. In the car they asked us for forgiveness, and said they were sorry we had to leave Iraq and our work.” The women didn’t believe their luck until their airplane took off from Baghdad. “We were happy to be free, but it was hard to leave Iraq, and to know that we might not be back for a long time.”

Their love for the country is evident in a video shot last April for rai, the Italian state television network. In it, the women describe their work and hopes for the people of Iraq. Pari, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, adjusts the yellow silk veil over her hair as she points out the restoration work at the school. Torretta looks 100% Western with an oversized black tote bag on her shoulder, but talks with ease to local elders and swings joyfully with kids in the school playground. In an eerie moment, Torretta is asked by the rai reporter why she continues her mission when others are going home. Her response: “We don’t do it because we feel like heroes. We just don’t want to put up walls between ourselves and the Iraqi people. Once we have to do that we’ll know it’s time to leave.” But they didn’t leave. And now they know they’re lucky to be alive. Their kidnapping “was an attempt to convince not only the West but also Iraqis that dialogue is impossible,” says Duilio Giammaria, the rai correspondent who followed their work over the past year. Still, the women hope their time in captivity helped open some eyes to all the good that aid workers do. Still visibly exhausted three days after landing in Rome, they worry about the future of Iraq. “There’s more freedom, especially freedom of speech, but right now I don’t think Iraq has any future,” says Torretta. “War is horrible, always,” says Pari. “Everyone suffers and no one is exempt.” Yet they’re already talking about going back. Eventually, after they have rested and decompressed with their families, “we want to return to Iraq because we love the country,” says Torretta. “But that doesn’t mean we’re packing our bags tomorrow.” All of the aid workers in Iraq are heroes, and all of them are risking their lives. The Simonas just happen to be the ones we’ve gotten to know by name.

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