By Kathleen Kern

I sat in the back of the church during the Christmas Eve midnight service in case the call came. I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket every few minutes to make sure it was on. But after the congregation lit candles and sang “Silent Night,” I knew the call I was waiting for would not happen that night.

All of us in Christian Peacemaker Teams have been nurturing rational and irrational hopes about Jim Loney, Tom Fox, Harmeet Sooden and Norman Kember since they disappeared Nov. 26 in Baghdad.

Because so many Islamic leaders called for the Swords of Righteousness Brigade to release the four in time for Christmas, I cherished the idea that the Brigade might actually acquiesce. I told family members I planned to visit in Ohio and Pennsylvania that I might be spending enormous amounts of time on the phone and e-mail doing media work over the holidays, should the CPTers be released.

After my initial disappointment on Christmas Eve, I realized that midnight in Akron, Ohio, is 8 a.m. in Baghdad. The people holding the CPTers could still release them on Christmas Day. As I drove to Elizabethtown, Pa., from Akron, I kept checking my phone and wondered whether it was illegal in Pennsylvania to talk on the phone while driving like it is in New York State.

By 4 p.m. I hit fog on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and crawled along at 40 mph as I approached the tunnels running through the Allegheny, Tuscarora, Kittatinny and Blue Mountains — the most exciting part of childhood car trips to visit my grandparents in Harrisburg. But these memories faded before my dull realization that Christmas Day in Iraq was over.

I know and like Jim and Tom. I’ve probably interacted with Jim the most of the four captives. He and I have butted virtual heads over the years regarding how long postings on CPTnet (which I edit) should be and the appropriate manner to educate CPTers bound for Israel/Palestine about anti-Semitism. Face to face, we have done better, and our mutual dedication to the “Christian” part of Christian Peacemaker Teams has covered a multitude of disagreements.

I want to tell Jim that shortly after he disappeared I posted every word of a 1,200-word reflection that I had rejected two years ago because the limit for CPTnet releases is 500 words.

Tom I met only once, at a CPT full-timers’ retreat the summer of 2004. His gentleness and nonjudgmental attitude toward people he disagreed with impressed me. I choke up when I fantasize about seeing him or Jim again. I do not fantasize about learning they have been murdered.

When I think about how the dangers facing Tom and Jim affect me, I know that the pain their families and other loved ones must feel is staggering. And I know I have to multiply that pain by tens of thousands of Iraqis whose loved ones have disappeared in prisons run by the U.S. military and those of the new Iraqi government. Iraqi families know that torture and sexual violations have happened in these prisons. They also know that some people swept up in military raids are never heard from again.

Thousands of people around the world are praying for Jim, Tom, Harmeet and Norman. Their lives and and work have become the subject of extensive media coverage. Whatever happens to them will have an impact. I cannot imagine what Iraqi families must feel when a son, brother or father disappears, and they know that the rest of the world does not notice.