Between The Lines

"American officials said an Iraqi husband and wife who work for the United States Embassy in Baghdad appear to have been kidnapped.... American officials said the husband disappeared late last week and that his wife disappeared after she tried to look for him."

This is a paragraph hidden late in a New York Times story about the search for five kidnapped Britons, who include a contractor and four body guards. But underneath that, between the lines, is this story, perhaps a love story about a woman who fears the worst,then knows the worst, how can she not, what else can it be, and would rather find her husband and end it all together than apart.

You can imagine how this is going to end, their bodies discovered tomorrow or the next day, two among the 30 or so found every day. They may be recogizable or they may not. Their deaths will be a 'message' to anyone who works for the Americans. A warning, in the ruins.

But who takes the warnings seriously now? People you see in the street may be alive or they may not. The assumption is that you're alive. But you have only yourself as a witness....

You think of that young couple that died trying to reach each other across a bridge in Sarajevo, one was Christian, the other Muslim, if I'm not mistaken.