American Hostage posted by Laura Parra

This is the story of the kidnapping of a journalist, Micah Garen, and how his family worked around the clock to bring him home safely. Micah and Marie-Hélène, Micah's "partner" in work and life, had their own media company where they could report on what they personally had interest in. They had traveled to many countries around the world and on this specific trip during the summer of 2004 they were in Iraq. They were making a documentary on the looting in Iraq. Marie-Hélène left to go home and Micah was planning to stay for an extra two weeks because he wanted to film some more events coming up soon. For both Micah and Marie-Hélène their worst nightmare was to be kidnapped and beheaded on camera. Unfortunately, they came incredibly close to that nightmare becoming a reality.


While the two had been in Iraq they had hired Amir a translator and friend of theirs. Marie-Hélène had recently left for home and Micah and Amir were trying to get more footage of a market that Micah had visited early. He had brought his small camera to try to get some footage without anyone seeing him videotaping. A man saw him videotaping and thought that he was a spy so chaos broke out. It ended up with both Micah and Amir being shoved into a van and forced to lay down with blindfolds and their hands tied up. They were taken to an open field and to their "home" for the next week or more. It was a sort of igloo made of branches but was short so they could barely stand up. As soon as he got to the shelter he found a piece of a cigarette box and on it he wrote MH ZEUG LOVE. He wrote this so that if he was to die everyone knew that he had MH (Marie-Hélène) and ZEUG (Zeugma, their dog who was more like their child) in his heart.

The two encountered the same routine for about a week. At night they were taken to a open field that they had to walk through thorns to get to. Micah was given the one pair of shoes and Amir was forced to walk barefoot with their blindfolds on. On their mats they would get as much sleep as they possibly could and before dawn they were taken back to their igloo type shelter. Multiple times during the day the guards would take turns keeping watch of the shelter but never showing their face because they were hidden by their keffiyehs. Micah and Amir actually became pleasant with a few of the guards, getting along. As the days dwindled down, they moved the two captives and the guards knew that the people in the new area did not like Americans, so the guards were their protectors at the same time that they were Micah and Amir's kidnappers.

Amir and Micah went through ten rough days with the soldiers. But, what they didn't know was their entire family, Amir's in Iraq and Micah's in the United States, was constantly fighting and working to the extreme trying to figure out what was best to do about the entire situation. Marie-Hélène had contacted many people all around the U.S. and people in countries around Iraq and in Iraq. They even contacted the FBI, a few agents ended up staying with Marie-Hélène and the blob, what she called all the family and friends helping out, in the hotel they were moved to for their safety. The chaos and close calls of whether or not to go to the media with a statement lasted for about a week and then Eva, Micah's sister, made the media statement.

At the beginning of the time in captivity Micah was focused on find a way to attack a guard in order to escape, or find any way period to escape. By the last few days he was thinking about his time differently. He was realizing how much he truly cared about Marie-Hélène and how he was more worried about them being hurt by him being in a threat video then himself actually being hurt. It was very interesting to see just how much Micah changed throughout those ten days, realizing what was truly important in his life.

After the ten days in captivity, Micah and Amir were set free. The guards that were taking them to their freedom celebrated with Micah and Amir with large smiles. Micah and Amir both had many strengths. They did not show any weaknesses to the guards throughout their captivity they also kept their hopes up. No matter what happened, even if they got down because of a new situation, they always found a way to push through. Also they came over the fear of being stuck in the shelter forever by slowly making a hole in the side of the shelter which they called "Freedom's Gate" for an emergency escape. On the other side of the world, Marie-Hélène pushed through her fear of Micah being killed by keeping herself busy with finding solutions to free Micah before anything like that could happen. Micah and Marie-Hélène are no longer just "partners" in life and work, as Micah called home for the first time after his release he proposed to Marie-Hélène and they got officially engaged in the fall of 2004.