“I am talking directly to the kidnappers.” (Ahmad, Shiite, Baghdad freelancer. “For eating, Sir!” was his answer when Filkins asked him why he kept a flock of twenty-five sheep on the roof of his home)
“The best sources are often people of marginal repute.” (Filkins) Ahmad’s fee: $250/day
“Sir, it is very complicated.” (Ahmad)
“Not good man.” (Waleed, Filkins’s driver, referring to Ahmad)
“Jill is at the racetrack.” (Ahmad, referring to American reporter Jill Carroll, kidnapped in the middle of the day, in the middle of the street; her translator, who was with her, had been killed)
“a brunette with a streak of pink dye in her hair” (Filkins, describing Jill Carroll)
“She wasn’t there.” (CIA section chief, two nights after Filkins gave him a tip that Carroll was being held at the racetrack.)
“I was afraid now, afraid of everything I didn’t know.” (Dexter Filkins)
“My dealings with Ahmad . . . had sunk to the level of farce.” (Filkins, after he and a fellow reporter end up pooling $6,000 of their own money to pay Ahmad for information on the whereabouts of kidnapped reporter Jill Carroll)
“Your buddy is just playing you.” (CIA section chief, to Filkins)
Self promises she will finish this book sometime today, then start on Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 