Not too long ago, National Public Radio correspondent Jamie Tarabay visited the home of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and saw a man look at her and whisper into Talabani's ear. The president laughed.

Tarabay, who was attending a political meeting, asked why and got an answer: They were discussing how much she might be worth if she were kidnapped. The best guess: $100,000.

In a phone conversation last week during a brief break from her duties as NPR's Iraq correspondent, Tarabay managed to actually find some humor in her price tag.

"Part of me was horrified that he was even articulating that," Tarabay recalled. "And part of me was horrified that I was only going for so little. It's a Catch-22. You don't want to give anyone any ideas, but you want to think, 'Just $100,000? Come on!' "

On a more serious note, "it made me sick to my stomach," she said. "If I was going to a political gathering and politicians were talking like that, what were the average Iraqis thinking? It's getting harder to do any real reporting. People just see you as dollar signs."

Tarabay faces a variety of risks besides kidnapping, and her movements are indeed limited for a variety of reasons. Yet her reporting for NPR from Iraq since December 2005 -- not to mention her willingness to return to the country again and again -- has won her plenty of acclaim.

Among other things, she has reported on a Baghdad singing troupe that's struggling to survive and the kidnapping of the father of an Iraqi man who works for NPR.

In perhaps her most gripping story, from March, she told of traveling in a military convoy when a roadside bomb went off. Listeners heard the sound of the bomb followed by a moment of stunned silence, then the shouts of men and the shower of debris raining down.

For a reporter, it might seem lucky -- in a way -- that she happened to have her tape recorder on at that time. But she has learned never to leave it off when traveling with the military.

"I always get a lot from the soldiers being inside a humvee. They talk very frankly," she said. "When I'm embedded, I don't really like to talk to the colonels as compared to the soldiers on the ground. They have to live it. They always give you a much more unvarnished view than the colonels who don't get it to see it themselves."

A Lebanese-Australian who grew up in both countries, NPR's Baghdad bureau chief is young -- 32 -- and already a veteran war reporter and author. (She wrote 2005's "A Crazy Occupation: Eyewitness to the Intifada.")

In Baghdad, she lives in a house in an undisclosed location, working in an office in the same building.

"Every time you leave, it's a big project," she said. "Everybody gets involved. You talk about where you're going to go, how you'll get there, who will take you. The drivers, the translators, your colleagues and you decide if it's worth it."

As for safety while living in Iraq: "We all have mortars and bombs land near us, we all have drive-by shootings near us, bombs blowing up nearby, (like a) suicide bomber who killed nine people."

Post-traumatic stress is a common problem for reporters who cover violence, and Tarabay hasn't been immune.

"I don't do crowds very well," she said. "I feel very claustrophobic in New York or Paris, and malls are the most terrifying thing in the world. One of the things they teach you in hostile environment training is to secure your exit. If I go into a place that's crowded and I can't see an exit, it screws me up."

Fire engines, loud trucks and yelling all trigger anxiety, Tarabay said, and she longs for silence, a rare treat for a war reporter.

"I remember being in a bar in Jerusalem a million years ago and all of my friends whom I was getting to know were war-weary correspondents," she said. "They were all talking about different people who had been killed. I was 25 and I didn't know anybody who'd been killed."

Her new friends warned: "Stay in this job for 10 years and you will."

"I didn't have to get 10 years, I'm afraid," she said.

Despite all this, Tarabay -- who's engaged to be married -- is returning to Iraq after a brief break in the United States.

"You keep going back because it's history and you're in the middle of it," she said. "That's a big thrill for me. You kind of want to see how it ends."

She also finds some solace in the Iraqis themselves.

"You feel like you have an obligation to let people know how difficult it is to see just one day through and survive it in Iraq," she said. "People who do it every day amaze me. They're the biggest reason why I keep going on."

E-mail Randy Dotinga at NCTimesRadio@aol.com.