Carroll family reunites in Boston

Nearly three months after she was abducted at gunpoint from a Baghdad street, journalist Jill Carroll had a joyous reunion with her family in Boston yesterday, beginning what is likely to be a long recovery from her ordeal and an adjustment to her newfound celebrity.

Passengers on the Lufthansa 747 jumbo jet that brought Carroll back to the United States shortly after noon said she was alternately laughing and marveling at the world outside her window after spending 82 days as a hostage in rooms where she could not see outside. She was also surprised to see her own face on the cover of a newspaper that the flight attendant handed her.

''I finally feel like I am alive again," Carroll told reporters from her newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, who accompanied her on the crowded flight to Logan International Airport. ''To be able to step outside anytime, to feel the sun directly on your face, to see the whole sky. These are luxuries that we just don't appreciate every day."

Minutes after arriving, the 28-year-old was whisked away in a police-escorted limousine from the tarmac to an undisclosed location to meet her father, mother, and twin sister. Before Carroll's abrupt release Thursday, they had received little news about her well-being since the kidnappers' threat to kill Carroll by Feb. 26 had passed.

Carroll has said little about her plans, aside from requesting ''quiet time" with her family.

Other journalists have written books about their experiences in Iraq, including two by reporters who either were kidnapped or nearly kidnapped. However, Micah Garen, a documentary filmmaker who wrote a book about his 10 days as a hostage in Iraq in 2004, said Carroll probably has more immediate concerns right now.

''There is just nothing like that reunion with your family," said Garen, whose loved ones -- like Carroll's -- waged an extensive campaign to win his freedom. ''We immediately left the next day and went to a quiet place in Rhode Island by the water for a week. . . . You really want to be isolated from the media craziness and spend time with your family and get back to normal."

Garen cautioned that ''normal" may return only gradually as Carroll reflects on what she has been through and how it has changed her life. Carroll's friend and translator, Allan Enwiya, was killed in the abduction, while Carroll has said she lived in isolation throughout her captivity, often under threat of harm. On a practical level, Garen said, she will not be able to work anytime soon in Iraq, both because of the danger and that she would be so widely recognized.

''Suddenly, overnight, the job that you really love -- reporting overseas -- is taken away from you and you don't know why," he said yesterday. ''People think that all these great things will come out of this but, in reality, you're taking many steps back."

Carroll's return came amid intense interest in her experience, heightened by a propaganda video that her captors made on the last night of her captivity. In it, Carroll praised her captors and spoke out against the US military presence in Iraq. She later renounced her statements, saying she was forced to participate and calling her abductors ''criminals at best."

Yesterday, US Senator John McCain of Arizona, a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, said Carroll's comments in the video should not be taken seriously as some commentators on talk radio and Internet blogs have done.

''This was a young woman who found herself in a terrible, terrible position. And we're glad she's home. We understand when you're held a captive in that kind of situation, that you do things under duress. And God bless her, and we're glad she's home," the Republican senator said on NBC's ''Meet the Press."

Many passengers aboard Lufthansa Flight 422 from Frankfurt did not realize that Carroll was in the first-class section. However, when the plane landed at 12:23 p.m., passengers were told to remain seated for at least an extra five minutes, apparently so that Carroll could leave without going through the airport terminal. ''It's wonderful she's back," said passenger Laura Greco of Cambridge.

When it became clear that Carroll would not talk to reporters, the media throng relocated to the grass in front of the headquarters for The Christian Science Monitor, which promoted Carroll from freelance writer to staff reporter shortly after her Jan. 7 abduction. At 1:30 p.m., spokesman Jay Jostyn said that Carroll had reunited with her family and that the paper would have an exclusive story on her return. The Christian Science Monitor account, posted on its website, said that her father, Jim Carroll, videotaped the reunion ''amid long joyful hugs and tears."

Carroll told the newspaper that she was moved several times during her captivity, but she was always held in rooms with no outside view. At one point, she said, her spirits were buoyed when she caught sight of strands of sunlight entering the ''cave" where she was held.

After her release, the paper reported, Carroll underwent morning and afternoon debriefings with the US Hostage Working Group in Baghdad. Then, she flew to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany where ''she spent a rainy Saturday napping, talking with her family by phone, and catching up on the news." That's when she learned of the controversy surrounding the video.

''Things I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not," Carroll said in a statement released Saturday by the newspaper. She told the paper that her abductors, calling themselves the Revenge Brigades, claimed to have killed another US hostage, though it is unclear to whom they were referring.

Garen, author of ''American Hostage: A Memoir of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq and the Remarkable Battle to Win His Release," said political controversy is just one of the issues Carroll will confront in the weeks ahead. Garen was forced to make a similar video before his release. ''You'll pretty much say anything to stay alive," he said.