by Adrian Levy
Keith: ‘My name is Keith Mangan. I am from Middlesbrough, UK and married to Julie. I am 33. We have started to secretly write whenever we can. We have to do what we can to get the message out. We feel exhausted, ground down. Hans Christian got a pencil from the villagers. We are using charcoal from the fire. I miss you very much, Julie. And my family, please send them my love if you read this note. We talk about what happened, how it happened, why it happened. The main problem is the sickness, which is very wearing. We are vomiting and have diarrhoea. We need medicine. But we are still alive.’
Paul: ‘HELP. My name is Paul Wells. I am 24 and from Blackburn, England. I was trekking with my girlfriend, Catherine. I hope she is well. This valley is the most beautiful place that I have seen. There’s no light pollution and there are beautiful hawks in the sky but my camera has been stolen. Wild animals are in the forests, but we do not see them. The villagers and our guards are very different from us. Whoever reads this should let the authorities know. We need HELP. We are waiting.’
There was no word from Dirk. The Squad wondered if he might have written something in German that the villagers, unable to understand it, had discarded.
With what they had, the Squad were able to judge that the hostages had probably learned from the radio that the Indian government was negotiating for their release. Their hopes would have been raised if they had heard the reports broadcast on 17 July quoting a senior Kashmiri police officer as saying: ‘Serious discussions are going on and we are not rigid. We may release four or five militants – but not the twenty-one they are demanding.’ If the hostages had heard and believed this, they would have concluded that al Faran had an intermediary elsewhere, far away from the Warwan. John Childs had thought as much on the first day of captivity, as he watched the kidnappers waiting to receive orders from Sikander on their VHF set.
In a long document found near Mungli village, a hard day’s walk from Sukhnoi, the hostages and several members of al Faran were cast as characters in a story based around their predicament. All that had survived of this, the villagers recalled, was the title page, a cast list and a summary of the plot. This must have been written under the influence of Hans Christian Ostrø. Many villagers in the valley recalled the blond hostage who ‘danced and sang and shouted’ all day long, refusing to be quiet. Even in captivity, Ostrø’s theatrical spirit was irrepressible.
A bundle of papers was recovered from various hiding places around Mungli too. They suggested that the hostages had spent a week or more there, possibly while the kidnappers were waiting for some delivery coming up from Anantnag, or negotiating for food supplies. Again, the originals were destroyed after the village note-takers had made an attempt at recording some of what they read:
A Dream Book – in which each hostage had recorded his nightly visions and invited the others to interpret them.
Medicine list – updated according to the ever-changing needs of the hostages.
Score Cards – used for games such as volleyball, cricket and football (separate cards for hostages, guards and villagers), as well as notes about rudimentary games played inside when the weather was bad, using river pebbles as counters.
Rules and Opinions – set by the hostages for themselves, to make living at close quarters possible, including a complaints page where any hostage could write down something that was irritating him, for later discussion.
An Atlas of the Mountains – an attempt to map the hostages’ location and possible escape routes.
The hostages were trying to manage their isolation, which had hit Kim Housego hard too: ‘So many hours spent waiting and doing nothing were agony. We became despondent. In spite of promises of release, we did not move.’ Even though he and David Mackie were held for only seventeen days, after the first week, relations with their kidnappers had become strained. ‘We did not talk with our captors as much as we had done earlier. They gave us food and walked away. Villagers were prevented from talking to us, too.’ So desperate were they to regain their freedom that Kim and David had contemplated a multitude of escape plans, including hurling themselves into the freezing river in the hope that it would carry them back to civilisation.
A sheet of paper torn from a school exercise book was recovered from under a long, flat dhona stone used by the local women for doing their washing at Margi. Part of what had been a much longer document that had been found by a young boy on the silt riverbank below the isolated village, perched high on the eastern flank of the Warwan, opposite Chordramun, villagers had copied it down.
‘We the creators of this new world, bored of the old, want anyone who finds this to understand the rules for citizenship,’ an unidentified hostage had written. ‘1. Everyone is free to do as they please. 2. Everyone can be anything they want to be. 3. Every God is great. 4. There shall be no tyranny under the rule of God and we fight for the rights of every man to wear what he wishes.’
The rigours of a remote Islamic life, where all anyone talked about was faith, were grinding the hostages down. There was a constant religiosity in the mountains that sat uncomfortably with the Westerners, who viewed faith as a private matter, although Don and Hans Christian were fascinated by the spiritual. Paul too had read widely on reincarnation, according to his family, and Dirk had found himself drawn to Islam, describing it to his girlfriend Anne as a ‘real living religion’. But after their abduction, and so many days of watching the constant rota of daily prayers, and being lectured on the pre-eminence of Islam, they may not have felt the same way.
There followed another list that had been copied by a villager: ‘Buildings, cities, natural wonders … Brazil, Peru, Norway, Israel, France …’ At first it looked similar to the list Hans Christian had written on the back of the Arvind Cotton Classics advertisement recovered from his body, in which he had named all the places in the world he had seen. But underneath was written: ‘We, the architects of this new world, are working to bring peace to the valley with a new programme of imaginary building in the style of great countries.’
Alone in their room in the wooden hut for many hours of the night and day, the hostages appeared to have been painstakingly building an imaginary world to inhabit, in an attempt to escape the banality and terror of the real one they occupied. ‘We demand a great library,’ the writer continued. ‘The Committee for a New Kingdom demands a list of books – Great Expectations (or anything by Dickens), Shakespeare, something by Tolkien, John le Carre, Tagore, Gunter Grass and Bertolt Brecht … We demand a new menu: out with bread and rice.’ As Kim Housego found a year earlier, the monotony of the food was one of the things that ground everyone down.
Other hostages have reacted to their captivity in similar ways. Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy who was abducted in Beirut in 1987 and held for almost five years, reflected that he came to see his imprisonment as a chance to embark on an inner journey, one as ‘complex, interesting, dangerous and rewarding as those I had made externally for most of my life’: ‘In a situation of extremity, allow your unconscious to come to your aid. Rather than nightmares, my dreams were frequently amusing. Things I thought I had forgotten began to emerge. Mentally, I began to write my autobiography. I drew on memory and language, the books I’d read, the passages I’d memorised, the language of childhood, which, for me, stood in part on the Common Book of Prayer and the hymns I’d sung. These all became invaluable. As does music, these breathe a certain harmony into the soul.’
A ‘list of songs’ followed in the Warwan papers, copied down by a villager who recalled that it was initialled ‘HC’, for Hans Christian. ‘Fisherman’s Blues’, he had begun with, a song by the Waterboys, one of his favourite bands; ‘War’ had followed, a sixties protest song by Edwin Starr; then ‘Dum Dum Boys’, an Iggy Pop song that had been adopted as the name of a Norwegian rock band he liked from Trondheim. ‘People Like Us’ was next, a Talking Heads track whose lyrics may have seemed to chime: ‘The clouds roll by and the moon comes up, How long must we live in the heat of th
e sun?’
Then something lighter, ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’, from the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Was that Hans Christian’s idea, or something supplied by one of the British contingent? Next came ‘Blowing in the Wind’, by Bob Dylan. Had they sung it together while they wondered if anyone was doing anything to free them? The list got more sombre, finishing with several Simon and Garfunkel ballads, including ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and ‘The Sounds of Silence’: ‘My words, like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence’.
Sukhnoi was their well of silence.
Near Brayan, a child found an empty box of Four Square cigarettes and took it to the shopkeeper there. Inside was a doodle of five stick figures with beards sitting beside a river, and the words ‘Our names are Paul, Keith, Don, Hans Christian and Dirk. We are being held hostage.’ Clearly this had been compiled while Hans Christian was still alive, although some time had clearly passed, as the wording on the message that accompanied it was becoming more urgent: ‘Please help us. Do not destroy this! Hide the box and take it to the authorities. THERE WILL BE A REWARD. Our lives are in grave danger. We are kept prisoners in Sukhnoi. We are easy to find, an entire day’s walk up from Inshan at the other end of the valley.’
This was followed by some helpful pointers, ‘in case the Indians are planning a rescue’: ‘The guards are not so watchful now. There are some sentries higher up overlooking the village. Perhaps six. Mostly gujjars. There are several more stationed in Rikanwas village just below us, perhaps two men. But they do not have the belly for a fight. No one wants to fight any more. P.T.O.’ Drawn on the inside of the box was a detailed map, with a snaking river crawling between tall mountains to a village marked with a cross. A bird’s-eye view of Sukhnoi was beside it. ‘We are here.’ An arrow pointed to a lone building on the village’s edge near the river. Written in capitals were the words ‘WOODEN HUT’. Next to it were scattered small crosses identified as ‘GUARDS’.
Had the hostages seen the Indian helicopter when they wrote this message? If they had, it would have conflicted with reports on the BBC at that time that they might well have heard, which questioned the extent of the Indians’ search efforts. In one press conference at the end of July, shortly after al Faran had made its false claim that the hostages had been wounded in a firefight with security forces, General Saklani had been forced to respond to an accusation that there was little evidence of a large search operation. ‘My men are invisible,’ he had said.
One villager came forward to describe how he had found an eighteen-inch length of gauze bandage, on which the hostages had made drawings and written a commentary. Seven stick men were depicted with beards, turbans and rifles, he remembered. Beneath each was a name: ‘Farooq’, ‘Schub’, ‘Nabeel-1’, ‘Nabeel-2’, ‘Malang’, ‘Mohammed-1’ and ‘Mohammed-2’: ‘These men are from Kashmir, Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are holding us. Please help.’
The bandage evoked the photos of Don and Keith, lying apparently bloodstained and badly injured, that had arrived in Srinagar on 6 August, supposedly evidence of the firefight of 21 July. On it were four signatures, but unfortunately the bandage had been lost.
This was the first evidence that Hans Christian Ostrø was no longer with the others, and dated this message to early August. It was difficult to be sure if he was still in Sukhnoi, tied to the charpoy, or had been taken away, but what came next suggested the latter: ‘Whoever reads this should help us now,’ read another transcribed note. ‘Everyone knows our situation by now. Our friend took letters from each of us. In them we asked for help and we do need help. Contact the police, the army, anyone you trust and set us free.’
This must have been written after the other hostages had been told Ostrø was going to be released. He had concealed their letters in his clothing, suggesting that they had known his departure was imminent. But only one letter – from Paul to Cath – had been found on his body by DSP Haider. What had happened to those written by Don, Keith and Dirk? Had the Turk found and destroyed them? Or had Ostrø, having realised he would not live long enough to deliver them, discarded them along the path in the hope that someone would pick them up? The Squad would never know.
More writings had been paraphrased in another village exercise book: ‘We have some advice for the Indian government. Everyone here wants this to end. Our guards are looking for a way out. We are watching the Indian helicopter. We have seen it repeatedly. But still no one comes.’ There were more drawings, too: a helicopter hovering over a village, from which matchstick figures were waving. ‘We are waiting. The kidnappers want money.’
IG Rajinder Tikoo’s talks about a money deal would not begin for several weeks, and would only be agreed on 17 September. But it appears the discussion in Sukhnoi had already turned to a ransom of some kind.
Another message was found on a label weighted with a stone. ‘Food is becoming scarce,’ it began mournfully, as transcribed by a shopkeeper. ‘Traipsing to find some more. We make a daily pilgrimage to other villages for rice and are looking for more wild plants to eat. Morning fogs have started, which the villagers say means snow is coming. They also taught us Kashmiri names for the iced mountains we can just see in the distance to the north – Nun and Kun – they meant visible and invisible. One other peak we can see behind to the north is called the Big Forehead. It shows the way to Kargil and Sonamarg. We are cold. There are only four of us. Villagers have nothing for us. The helicopter is still there. Please help us.’
This note suggests the hostages had found some way to communicate with the villagers, and confirms that they were confused by the constantly hovering Indian helicopter, which conflicted with the countless items broadcast on various radio stations in which Indian officials claimed still to be searching. ‘We don’t know where the kidnappers and their captives are hiding,’ one police official told the BBC on 14 August. ‘We think they’ve been moving constantly up in the mountains.’
A document that might originally have come from some kind of diary contained these words, according to the man who copied them down: ‘Menu: Rice, salt tea, biscuits. Rise 4.10 a.m., prayers started early today as some local councillor came to the village and we were hidden away.’ Like Kim Housego, the hostages complained that most nights it was so cold they could barely sleep, and that breakfast was always the most disappointing meal of the day: ‘Cold bread from last night, hard and tasteless. We cannot drink another cup of salt tea.’ According to this record the hostages had been allowed to exercise down by the river for only an hour before being locked up again: ‘Played games with stones in the hut. Have listed all our favourite songs and places to visit but Dirk has not talked for three days. He misses Hans Christian.’ That meant this note must have been written in late August or early September.
Whoever wrote it was either putting on a brave face, or reporting what Hans Christian had also hinted at in his letters: that some of the fighters in al Faran had bonded with the captives. ‘We feel almost like we have become one unit with our kidnappers. We talk to them and they eat with us. We help them when they are sick and they take us with them when they hunt or forage. Let’s hope we can see it through to the next stage.’ And although Hans Christian was no longer with them, his influence lived on: ‘We are telling stories, making up an imaginary world with the best places and best cities, what kind of people would live there, what kind of buildings would it have, who would be in charge, what kind of music would be in the bars and cafes.’
On another page, the original of which had been ripped from the school exercise book, was a passage entitled ‘Notes for a “Letter to the world”.’ ‘Dear World,’ it read. ‘We want to know when you are coming for us. We thought we would be set free. We thought it was the end. But it has not ended.’ There the note finished, as if the writer had been interrupted. Were they plotting to escape, the Squad wondered. Or had they decided to sit tight, having heard on the radio that the Indian negotiator, IG Tikoo, had successfully whittled
down al Faran’s demands from twenty-one prisoners to four?
‘We dedicate this to Hans Christian Ostrø,’ began a note found wrapped around some flat pebbles outside Brayan. If the surviving hostages had not heard about the Norwegian’s death from the radio or the kidnappers, someone in one of the villages must have told them about it now. But did they know how he had died, or who was responsible? The next few lines of script were illegible, said the villager who had transcribed the message, the page having got soaked before it was recovered, but the last sentence was still legible, and it was chilling: ‘We all said a prayer for him – believers and non believers. Now we know our letters reached no one. If you find this you have to help us or no one will.’
The words called to mind the mournful picture of the four hostages that reached the Press Enclave in Srinagar on 22 August, about ten days after Ostrø was beheaded: four wan men, their faces without hope, with Dirk and Don holding up a newspaper dated 18 August 1995. ‘It seems that the Norwegian was killed first because he was the most expendable,’ one broadcaster had claimed on the day the picture surfaced in Srinagar. ‘The kidnappers are calculating that Britain and the United States would be able to apply more pressure on India to comply with their demands.’ Were the hostages hearing this kind of analysis on the radio too, the Squad wondered, fearing for their sanity?