A Happy Ending

Florence Aubenas is accustomed to life in danger zones. As a foreign correspondent for the French daily Libération, she has covered wars in Afghanistan, Algeria and Kosovo, and genocide in Rwanda. But she'd never become the story — until Aubenas, 44, was taken hostage along with her Iraqi translator, Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, by Sunni insurgents in Iraq. Sent to Baghdad last December to cover the Iraqi elections, she was captured in January while reporting near Baghdad University in the al-Jadriya district of the city. Blindfolded and chained by her wrists and ankles in a 2 m by 4 m pitch-black room,...