The “hailstones” bounced off the roof and windscreen around noon, 20 miles from Baghdad. Fallujah hail — bullets.

Even before the lorry slewed across our path, I was spinning the steering wheel, veering away from the dozen masked gunmen hanging over the sides, some firing Kalashnikovs while others pointed rocket-propelled grenades at our zig-zagging car.

On to the hard shoulder, a loop as wide and fast as a three-ton armoured Mercedes can handle safely and we were hurtling in the other direction towards safety. Unless they hit a tyre. Hiss. Rattle. Tyre. Shit. So, six days after pictures of burning and dismembered Americans filled television screens worldwide, a British and an American journalist sit stranded in the semi-desert on the outermost fringes of Fallujah, looking through the windscreen at two RPGs aimed directly at our heads.

We were eight hours into Iraq, on the Amman-Baghdad highway, in the bandit country where no US Marines will come charging to our rescue because the coalition military is too busy quelling the insurrections that have erupted all around Iraq.

In front lies Fallujah, where Americans are laying siege to the hottest of Iraq’s many flashpoints. Behind us is the equally volatile town of Ramadi, where 12 Marines were killed on Tuesday. The Iraqis watching us from a weigh station, a tea hut and other buildings quickly melt away as the Ali Baba (bandits) seize us.

Over the next eight hours, we would gain an extraordinary insight into the men behind the shifting, complex matrix of thieves, idealists, patriots, Baathists, gunmen and Islamists whom the West lumps together under the label “terrorists”. But now our only concern is to save our lives.

If the Ali Baba look hard enough at our laptops and documentation they will find out that we have worked in Jerusalem and have just arrived from the capital of the hated “Israeliens”.

Time to start talking. Very, very quickly. I throw open the door and arms reach in, hungrily. Papers, money, identity cards and telephones are grabbed, knives go to throats and shrieks of “Britanni, Britanni, Amreeeeeki”.

My companion, Orly Halpern, an American freelance, is bundled into an orange and white taxi, screaming “No, no”. I push to be with her, not wanting to be separated. I jump into the car, straight into the barrel of a Kalashnikov thrust in my face. In my right ear a jagged Bowie knife. On my left a masked thug — the most deranged of the mob — headbutting me as he tries to attach a blindfold, and screaming incessantly. My pidgin Arabic cannot pick it up, but Orly recognises the words as “You are woman. We won’t kill you. But he’s finished.”

For the next ten minutes we repeat, like a mantra, “sahafi, sahafi, sahafi” (journalist) in stereo as the frenzied thieves rifle through wallets finding evidence of our “occupier” status.

As we drive through villages, the evidence of bandit country is for all to see. A vast no-go area for Iraqi police, where no US soldier would approach without heavy armour and back-up. Every village is guarded by masked youths with RPGs. Not much help there. Within minutes the car arrives at a house, and we are bundled at knifepoint to the gate. Then a black car pulls up and a young Iraqi leans out the window, talking abruptly and waving a walkie-talkie. The “Mujahidin” (resistance fighters) have arrived, and are taking charge. This lot are calmer, and more disciplined — a good thing. The bandits are clearly afraid of them — a bad thing.

They bring us to a second house, the home of the mukhtar, a village elder who settles disputes. This is a Sunni home. The bandits were Shia, they say. But despite the calm and the assurances, guns are still on display, the windows barred and we are perturbed to see the original kidnappers still lurking in the background.

Little is said or done until the leader, a tall, black-garbed figure who introduces himself as Abu Mujahid, arrives. Surrounded by aides, he strides across the room and I stretch out my hand. He produces a stump from inside his right sleeve, saying: “The Americans did this. Last year.” Not a good start.

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