Last week the house was quiet as he tried to come to terms with the news that, after being held hostage for more than three weeks, she had been murdered.

“That was her chair,” he said, pointing to the empty cottage armchair in the living room, her books by the side table and her reading glasses where she left them the night before she was abducted.

“The house feels cold and empty. I miss her everywhere in this house. I miss her in the study, in her living room, in her kitchen, everywhere,” he said, looking up at the staircase from the library to the bedrooms. “I keep on thinking that she might be upstairs or in another room.”

Tahseen had shown immense self-control in a number of television appeals for her release after Margaret, the 59-year-old local director of the charity Care International, was kidnapped on October 19.

Now, however, he choked with emotion as he said: “I am totally destroyed and distraught. I think of her all the time and it is killing me. I never thought I would lose her this way. Her loss is immense for me. My heart aches with pain and I miss her so very much.”

When he took a private telephone call in the living room — her favourite room — the quiet house echoed with his heart-wrenching sobs. Recovering himself, he reappeared a few minutes later with a mask of self-composure.

“If only someone would give me news on whether she was dead or alive. Not knowing what has happened to her just breaks my heart,” he said. “If only they would give her back to me, dead or alive, so that she and I can rest in peace.”

For Tahseen, Margaret was more than a widely loved charity worker. She was his wife of 32 years, his “twin soul”. They met in 1970 in London, where he worked as station manager for Iraq’s national airline. He was nine years older.

“She was at the airport waiting for a friend of hers to arrive from Australia,” he recalled with a smile. “I just saw her and asked her if I could have a coffee with her while she waited. We talked a bit and then I started to see her.”

They were married in London, and when Tahseen’s posting ended two years later she insisted on returning with him to Iraq. She worked for several years as an English teacher at the British Council and, at the same time, she converted to Islam, learnt fluent Arabic and took Iraqi citizenship.

After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and the British Council closed its doors in Baghdad, she began working for Care International, eventually becoming its local head.

“She was the only humanitarian organisation that remained,” Tahseen said. “Margaret was a very dedicated woman as well as loving and caring, and she loved the Iraqi people and loved to help them. Saddam’s regime never interfered in her work.”

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