This is a hard time to be a journalist—cutbacks everywhere, declining public confidence in the profession, the publishing industry in flux—but nowhere is it harder to be a journalist than in the Middle East. There, reporters also face the risk of being detained, maimed, or killed when they head off to work.

A little over four months into 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has already declared this to be the most perilous year ever to be a reporter in the region. Of the 16 journalist fatalities the CPJ has recorded this year worldwide, 14 have occurred in the Middle East. In addition, more than 500 press-freedom violations have been documented by the CPJ in the region in 2011—that includes everything from confiscation of cameras to detentions, kidnappings, obstruction, jamming of satellite signals, and even targeted killings.

This is the environment that Dorothy Parvaz—a former reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer who lost her job when the paper went online only in 2009 and now works for Al Jazeera—was preparing to venture into when she called fiancé Todd Barker on April 28.

"She told me she was going to Damascus the next day," Barker tells The Stranger

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The reason: Syria is the most recent country to see a popular uprising connected to the "Arab Spring," and Parvaz wanted to help deliver a rare firsthand account of what was going on inside the country. "This is a region of predominantly, if not entirely, repressive and authoritarian regimes," says Mohamed Abdel Dayem, spokesman for the CPJ, explaining the importance of taking such a reporting risk. "They're attempting—unsuccessfully, I might add—to control the narrative."

Leaving for Syria, Parvaz sounded excited over the phone, and maybe a little nervous, too, says Barker. "This was her first dangerous assignment," he adds. To him and others familiar with Parvaz's reporting, it wasn't at all surprising that she would go. While in Seattle, she pushed back hard against post-9/11 Islamophobia and tangled publicly with Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly over convoluted accusations that one of her blog posts meant she wanted to burn down churches. "Dorothy is a daring thinker and a daring writer," says Melanie McFarland, a former P-I television critic who remains close friends with Parvaz.

As soon as she got to Damascus, Parvaz was supposed to call Barker and be touch with Al Jazeera. But a day passed, and then a night. No word from Parvaz. Barker became concerned, as did Al Jazeera, which concluded that Parvaz—who has US, Canadian, and Iranian citizenship—had likely been detained by Syrian authorities just after she stepped off her flight from Doha, Qatar. The network began publicly demanding her release, but six days passed without any response from Syrian officials.

During those six days, there was plenty of cause for alarm. While no journalists have died in Syria this year, or in any year since the CPJ began keeping records in 1992, Abdel Dayem said the country still has "a very, very poor press-freedom effort"—and, he added, "that poor record has only gotten poorer since March 15, when the unrest began."

The country's leaders have tried to impose a blackout on foreign media coverage by refusing to issue visas to foreign journalists, but Parvaz was using her Iranian passport to try to get around those restrictions. Abdel Dayem says, "She simply showed up as an Iranian citizen."

If that seems like a potentially dangerous gamble, well, that's what foreign correspondents do. "Journalists put themselves in harm's way with regularity," Abdel Dayem continues. "It's simply part of their job description."

After six days of silence, the Syrian government confirmed it is holding Parvaz. The news eliminated some of the grimmer possible explanations for her being incommunicado and allowed those pushing for her release to use normal diplomatic channels (while also establishing the Syrians as accountable for her safety).

As of press time, it has been 12 days since Barker, or anyone outside of Syria, has heard from Parvaz. He's drawing support from her family, whom he's now with in Vancouver, BC, and all of them have been heartened by the online efforts to draw attention to her case—efforts that he called "amazing" and "a tremendous comfort."

Here in Seattle, where Parvaz still has a lot of friends and former colleagues—including me—people are checking the Free Dorothy Parvaz Facebook page for updates and calling Syria's US embassy daily to lobby for her release. McFarland, the former P-I television critic, says she's focusing on the fact that Parvaz hasn't been charged with any crime and was simply trying to deliver the kind of important news that people—when they do think fondly of journalists—want journalists to be delivering.

"She hasn't done anything wrong," McFarland says. "She was only trying to do her job. She's supposed to be my houseguest this month, not theirs." recommended