by Puk Damsgård
Outside, one of the residents of the house was climbing a plum tree. Daniel took photos of the man sitting on a branch, shaking the bitter green plums on to the ground; the man gave them a bagful for the trip to Azaz.
When they reached the outskirts of town, they stopped beside two brothers who stood with their doves at the roadside. Their father used to sell vegetables, they said, but now there was more money to be made selling bricks and cement to rebuild bombed houses, should anyone dare to bet on a future in Azaz.
‘Why do you have the doves?’ asked Daniel.
Aya translated.
‘Because birds are free,’ said the boys.
Daniel wrote it down in his notebook and took some photographs of a flock of white birds against the heavy, ominous sky.
Shortly afterwards, he photographed the town’s ruined mosque. A boy in a Kung Fu Panda T-shirt and his older brother in military trousers were playing in some burned-out military vehicles. Others were busy removing valuable copper wiring from an armoured vehicle.
A hairdresser’s was still open, so Daniel and Aya went in and had a nice chat. After fifteen minutes, they said goodbye to the friendly barber. But as they stepped out on to the street, a vehicle suddenly came along at high speed and stopped abruptly in front of them. Daniel took note of the passengers: a group of masked men with Kalashnikovs.
‘Get in the car,’ ordered Aya hurriedly and signalled to him that she would talk to them.
Daniel got in the back seat, while listening to Aya, who was explaining in Arabic. The men asked several questions and seemed so unfriendly and intimidating that Daniel looked down at his feet. Aya could hear that one of the men, the only man not masked, spoke with a Tunisian accent. They asked who she and the blond man were and she explained that they were in Azaz to do stories about the war.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Daniel, when the masked men had finally driven off again.
‘They just wanted to know what we’re doing,’ said Aya.
‘It seemed very intense.’
‘Don’t worry about it. That’s just how Arabs are,’ said Aya, who didn’t seem frightened by the episode.
Daniel was shaken – and so was the driver, apparently, because he didn’t want to continue working with them. Aya called Ayman, a friend who lived in Azaz, and soon afterwards he picked them up and drove them to a bombed-out neighbourhood in the city.
The children were playing in the rubble as the sun was setting. A living room was half blown away. Portraits were still hanging on the wall, and green climbing plants clinging to the shattered outer wall brightened up the scene.
When the sun had gone down and there was no longer enough light for Daniel to take photographs, they bought chicken and Pepsi from the local kebab man and drove home to Ayman’s empty apartment. His wife and two daughters had fled to Turkey, like so many others from the city who weren’t able to maintain a normal life for fear of the fighting and the sporadic bombing from the regime. Ayman also spent most of his time in Turkey, but used the apartment now and then when he was working in Azaz.
There was a sudden power cut and Ayman lit candles in the living room. The artificial flower decorations on the shelves cast shadows against the ceiling, while they sat around the coffee table and ate.
After eating, Daniel, Aya and Ayman climbed up on the roof, from where they could glimpse small flashes of light in the distance. Daniel was told that it came from the fighting that was going on at the air base a few miles outside the city. Up there on the roof, in the darkness, he took a picture of his own shadow on a wall; it was the last photograph he would take in Syria.
Afterwards he drank a cup of tea, while he transferred the day’s images to his hard drive and sent texts home to his father and to Signe, as he had promised. He said that the day had gone well, that he had already taken a lot of photos and that the people were nice.
‘I love you,’ he wrote.
The three of them blew out the candles and Daniel crawled into his sleeping bag on a sofa in the living room. The day’s experiences whirled around in his head, especially the masked men. Who were they? He feared for a moment that they would come round at night, and wondered if he should have tried to get out of Syria after he had been seen. But he calmed himself down. He was being too paranoid. Aya had spoken to them and, if the men had wanted to kidnap him, they would have done it then.
He eventually fell asleep.
· * ·
Kjeld and Susanne were at home in their red-brick house on the Thursday evening when a text message appeared on Kjeld’s mobile. It was the first time ever that Daniel had written ‘I love you’. Signe wrote to them at the same time to say she had received a message that the day in Syria had gone well.
‘We’re sitting in the candlelight drinking tea. It’s just as quiet as Hedegård,’ read Daniel’s message.
If that was true, it must have been really quiet, because the only thing that could be heard outside the windows in Hedegård was the whistling of the wind.
· * ·
Daniel leapt out of his sleeping bag early on Friday morning. He wanted to go outside and take photographs in the soft morning light. Before he went off with Ayman and Aya, he packed a bag with the essentials: camera, passport, wallet and mobile. He left his leather backpack with the sleeping bag, computer and hard drive in the apartment. As there was no fighting in the area, he also left his bulletproof vest and the first-aid kit.
They drove to the city centre, where they met a large family who were fleeing, squeezed into a two-seater pickup. Blankets and mattresses were bulging on the bed of the truck.
‘May I photograph them?’ asked Daniel, but the family didn’t want to be photographed and drove off quickly.
An elderly gentleman walked across the road towards them. ‘You aren’t allowed to film here,’ he said.
The old man told them that they had to have permission to photograph from the local authorities. Daniel looked enquiringly at Aya.
‘Who are the local authorities?’
‘They’re all right. I know them,’ said Aya and she told him that the rebels controlled the area.
She knew where the authorities were and they decided to go there. They cut across a square and stopped in front of a sand-coloured building surrounded by a high wall. Before the rebels had taken control of Azaz, the building had housed the Assad regime’s local council office. They knocked on the black metal gate.
The first thing Daniel saw when the door opened was a boy. At least, his height corresponded to a boy about twelve or thirteen years old, but he couldn’t see his face because a black hood was pulled down over it; he was carrying a gun.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked the youngster.
‘We just need a permit from your superiors,’ said Aya.
They were told to wait in the yard and the boy disappeared into the building. While they were waiting, Daniel took note of the long, unmown grass and wild bushes in the garden. A grey-haired, elderly man in camouflage clothing soon came out into the yard and spoke to Aya in Arabic. His eyes were angry and the rest of his face was devoid of expression.
The boy with the black hood came out again. ‘I need to borrow your camera,’ he said.
Daniel didn’t dare disobey, and he reminded himself that he had downloaded his photos from the day before on to the computer and hard drive, which were in Ayman’s apartment.
Meanwhile, the grey-haired man continued talking to Aya in a tone that was getting faster and louder. Aya was looking down at the tiles in the yard, which made Daniel nervous.
She said she knows them and now she’s staring at the ground. What the hell’s going on? And it also happened yesterday … I certainly won’t use Aya again, she hasn’t got a grip on things, he thought to himself, and he couldn’t help looking at the gun in the grey-haired man’s belt.
Suddenly he began
pointing at Daniel, while spewing Arabic at Aya.
This is about me, thought Daniel, and his vision momentarily went black, as if he had been standing too long.
Cold sweat was trickling out under his blue shirt as the grey-haired man motioned for them to go inside. At the entrance, Daniel took off his boots and put them next to a lot of other shoes on a carpet that was laid out over the stone floor.
They were shown into a small, shadowy room with sofas along the wall and a wooden table in the middle. Daniel sat down furthest away from the door next to Aya, while Ayman sat in a corner.
The rebels asked for Daniel’s papers and disappeared with them into an adjoining room, while the old man began questioning him through Aya, who translated. There was also another man on the sofa, who had comically put his glasses on over his black face mask.
‘I’m a photographer from Denmark,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ve come to do a story on how the war is affecting civilian Syrians.’
Ayman was silent and deathly pale, and Daniel had only one thought in his head: If we get out of here, we go back across the border straight away.
A tall, heavily built man entered the room and confronted Aya. He had a scarf wrapped around his face, so Daniel could see only a pair of eyes made up with black eyeliner.
Aya stared stiffly at the floor.
‘They say they don’t believe you, Daniel. They say we’re spies.’
‘But I am who I say I am. I’m a photographer from Denmark, here to portray the war,’ he repeated.
‘He says they know that sensors are put on cars so drones can come and destroy the town,’ translated Aya.
Daniel remained silent and looked away as masked men in tunics and with Kalashnikovs over their shoulders came and went in the living room.
‘Sit properly,’ was the order when Daniel crossed one leg over the other.
Instead, he had to sit with his knees together side by side, while he was presented with new allegations.
‘We’ve checked your camera. You’ve taken many pictures of the places where the fighters live. You’re going around gathering information in the area. Who are you?’
Daniel reiterated who he was.
The grey-haired man then asked Aya to write a long letter by hand. Afterwards, Aya translated to Daniel that they could go back to Turkey when he had signed the letter. A friendly person served him with a cup of tea. For a moment, Daniel had a feeling that they just wanted him out of Azaz. The men chatted casually and laughed as he signed the letter.
‘They say that you have to stand up now,’ said Aya.
Daniel had managed to drink only half of the tea and his fixer seemed nervous.
‘They say that you have to turn around and put your hands behind your back. It’s just normal procedure,’ she reassured him.
Daniel’s head was spinning when he got up and he didn’t have time to respond before his hands were twisted behind his back and handcuffed. Some foreign fingers approached his face, removed his glasses and blindfolded him. There was silence in the room while his wallet, mobile and passport were removed from his pockets. He didn’t resist. Not even when he was led away from Aya and Ayman in the living room and down into a basement, where he was pushed down on to a mattress.
He lay on his side with his arms behind his back as he heard the door being slammed shut and locked. The handcuffs burned his wrists; the blindfold felt tight. He was so afraid that all his thoughts and feelings disappeared.
· * ·
On Friday morning Kjeld and Susanne got up early and Kjeld drove to work. Susanne was going to the hairdresser at 11 a.m. to have her hair done and then on to work in Legoland. Daniel’s younger sister Christina went to her high school.
That evening Kjeld and Susanne were packing to visit some good friends who had a summer cottage on the island of Fanø.
‘I can’t understand why I haven’t heard from Daniel all day!’ said Kjeld.
‘Maybe he’s forgotten to write,’ said Susanne.
Signe was also wondering about the silence. She contacted Kjeld to ask if he had heard anything. Kjeld’s ‘no’ meant there had been no sign of life from Daniel since Thursday evening. At 10.37 p.m. on Friday Signe sent an email to her boyfriend.
‘Would you reply to my mail? I’d really like to hear from you xx.’
When Kjeld and Susanne sailed to Fanø on Saturday morning, they still hadn’t heard anything from Daniel. Kjeld also sent him a message.
Susanne felt a creeping uneasiness, but pushed it away by telling herself she was always getting worried for no reason.
While they took a long walk on the beach and ate lunch, Kjeld was constantly checking his mobile. Susanne tried to convince herself that Daniel was just getting lazy about writing; at any rate, he was out of Syria and on his way home.
But these evasive explanations didn’t help. A knot was forming in her stomach. They tried in vain to call Daniel’s mobile and they called Signe, who hadn’t heard anything from him either. Nevertheless, she would still go to Copenhagen Airport to pick him up at 10 p.m., as agreed.
During dinner on Fanø, Susanne noticed that Kjeld wasn’t drinking any red wine. She looked at him enquiringly. He leaned over towards her ear and whispered, ‘I think we’ll have to go home this evening.’
It was the final of the Eurovision Song Contest and Susanne and Kjeld and their friends watched with 150 million other viewers as a barefooted Danish girl, Emmelie de Forest, sang herself into the hearts of Europeans to win with ‘Only Teardrops’.
Kjeld had difficulty concentrating and, just after 10 p.m., Signe rang. Daniel hadn’t been on the plane. But was it the one he should have been on? There was confusion about the arrival time. The note Daniel had written was at home on the table in Hedegård. Kjeld remembered that Daniel had crossed out the flight time and written a new one, but no one could now say with certainty when he was supposed to arrive.
‘We have to go home,’ said Kjeld.
The last ferry sailed from Fanø at 11.30 p.m. They just made it.
When they got home, Kjeld immediately found Daniel’s note. He should have landed by now. Kjeld went into his office and at 1 a.m. he called Arthur’s number.
· * ·
Daniel didn’t know how much time had passed before he heard footsteps on the stairs and a man ordered him to sit up and cross his legs. A hand pushed the blindfold down around his neck and Daniel could just make out the contours of a man sitting on a stool, holding something that looked like his notebook.
The man’s movements were calm. He asked questions in broken English about Daniel’s notebook and the names and experiences written in it. As Daniel was practically blind without his glasses, the man had to hold the notebook up to his eyes, while he read the notes out loud in Danish.
Daniel told him he was a gymnast and reminded himself that he shouldn’t talk about religion but about family, which the kidnapper might be able to relate to. To illustrate that he was telling the truth, he got up from the mattress and did the splits with his hands cuffed.
‘Stop that,’ the man said. ‘If the others see that I’m sitting like this with you right now, I’ll be in trouble.’
Daniel was overflowing with questions he didn’t dare ask, frightened of provoking his kidnappers.
‘I really hope that the others believe your story as much as I do. Whatever happens, they won’t kill you,’ the man stated, before blindfolding Daniel again and disappearing from the basement.
Soon there was noise on the stairs, as if several people were coming down into the basement room. Daniel heard the tramp of boots – and the sound of a stun gun that buzzed close to him. Suddenly there was a huge blast as a shot was fired into the ceiling. His ears were ringing.
‘You, CIA!’ a voice shouted.
Daniel didn’t answer; his thoughts were whirling in his head.
&nbs
p; ‘We shoot you! We cut your head off!’
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Will this take three days … or three weeks? he wondered.
Daniel felt several pairs of hands on his body, carrying him up the stairs, and then they beat him over the head with what felt like the barrel of a rifle, before he was loaded into a van. At first he thought he was alone in the back of the car, but after they had driven a little way, he heard Ayman’s tearful voice. He was either shouting or praying to Allah.
The smell of diesel fuel entered Daniel’s nose and he tensed his muscles to keep his balance against the swinging of the vehicle. He felt defenceless with his hands cuffed behind his back.
They were going to die. He could hear that in Ayman’s prayers. He imagined drowsily how they would soon stop the car and shoot him and Ayman, a bullet in the back of the head for each of them. He became strangely peaceful at the thought. Sounds and smells and dreams disappeared instantly. All that was left was the memory of his life.
I have experienced a lot in my short life. I’m grateful for that. Maybe I’ve constantly been pushing at the boundaries. Now I’ve felt the real world. Some things have consequences and that is what is happening now. I will go to my father; maybe I’ll meet him now. And Nan and Günther the cat. Signe, we found each other again. Mum and Dad, you have been the most wonderful parents … and Grandma and Grandpa …
The car stopped, pulling Daniel abruptly out of his thoughts. He was dragged from the car and thrown into a cold basement room with a tiled floor that seemed like a bathroom.
He fell asleep on the hard floor in the foetal position, with handcuffs and blindfold still in place, and woke up only when cold water was thrown over his head. Other prisoners were brought into the room, but Daniel didn’t dare to speak to them or Ayman. Perhaps they were spies and his driver’s accomplices, he thought.
During the night, his body shook with cold. During the day, what sounded like young men came and made frivolous interrogations.
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ asked one of them.
‘Yes, Signe,’ said Daniel from his position on the floor. The young men laughed triumphantly.