The ISIS Hostage

by Puk Damsgård

  Suddenly he sensed someone looking at him. As he turned his head, he could just make out the outline of a small figure in the doorway. It had to be a child. Daniel turned his head back – and jumped. He sprung off from the table towards the ceiling. He felt a violent jerk in his body and the plaster from the ceiling raining down on him. There was a tightening sensation around his neck and everything went black. He felt his body tingle and he urinated in his trousers.

  He descended further and further into darkness.

  · * ·

  Arthur was working undercover to locate Daniel. After extensive discussions in various towns along the Syrian border, he hired several locals to help him with the search. These included Alpha, whom he called his assistant and who had an extensive network, and Majeed, whose task it was to track down the group that had kidnapped Daniel.

  Majeed was a local television journalist who had previously worked as a fixer for foreign journalists in Syria. When Alpha rang Majeed and requested his help, he agreed despite the high risk he’d be taking, not only for himself, but also for his wife and their three children. But he needed the money and he felt sorry for the vanished Dane. Even though Majeed didn’t know Daniel, he got the impression that Daniel had travelled to Syria to tell people’s stories through his photos. Perhaps Daniel was someone who thought everyone else was just as kind as he was – but Syria was no longer like that.

  With a file in his bag containing information about Daniel, Majeed travelled around Azaz and the surrounding area searching for clues. He held countless futile meetings, until he finally succeeded in making contact with an influential ISIS figure in the area. The man went by the nom de guerre Abu Suheib al-Iraqi, which meant he came from Iraq. According to several sources, he was about forty years old and had been a soldier under Saddam Hussein. In other words, he was a former Ba’ath Party loyalist turned ISIS hardliner, now fighting in Syria and involved in kidnapping both foreigners and Syrians.

  Along with a trusted friend, Majeed drove to the house where they knew that Abu Suheib was staying. A chubby man with a full beard covering his wide face greeted them with a bowl of fruit and an otherwise unwelcoming attitude. When Majeed explained that they were looking for information about a disappeared Dane, Abu Suheib spat out, ‘You dare to come here and ask me about an infidel who has sullied the Prophet’s name? We will slaughter him.’

  ‘Who has sullied the Prophet’s name?’ asked Majeed.

  ‘Denmark. Wasn’t there a cartoonist in Denmark who sullied the Prophet’s name?’

  ‘You want to kill a Dane because another Dane has insulted the Prophet?’ proceeded Majeed carefully.

  ‘All Danes are infidels and we will slaughter them all, and because you have come here to ask about him, we ought to slaughter you too.’

  The only positive outcome of the meeting so far was that Majeed had finally found someone who admitted that he knew of Daniel’s existence. He tried to calm him down.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Abu Suheib.

  ‘We want to bring Daniel home to his family.’

  ‘How many “notebooks” will you give me?’ asked Abu Suheib.

  Majeed didn’t know what he meant by ‘notebooks’, but later found out that in Iraq a notebook is the equivalent of $100,000.

  ‘It’s impossible to put together such a huge sum of money,’ objected Majeed. ‘His mother and father and fiancée are the ones trying to get him home, not the state.’

  ‘The man works for the intelligence service – he’s admitted it.’

  ‘He’s a photographer,’ answered Majeed, who wanted to show Abu Suheib his file with information about Daniel for proof. But Abu Suheib wouldn’t budge. He demanded an ambulance to transport wounded ISIS soldiers and seven notebooks. When Majeed pleaded again, explaining that they couldn’t pay so much, Abu Suheib asked him to leave.

  Arthur viewed Majeed’s meeting with Abu Suheib as a possible opening. Abu Suheib seemed willing to negotiate and he knew where Daniel was. More names began to emerge. On his notepad he wrote ‘Abu Athir’ and drew a square around the name as someone to be investigated in greater detail. The information suggested that Daniel was being kept under Abu Athir’s control somewhere in Aleppo, even though it was likely that Abu Suheib’s local ISIS group in Azaz had been the ones to kidnap him.

  · * ·

  Daniel had now been missing for more than two weeks. After the first week, Susanne and Kjeld were trying to get back to their normal routines. On Sundays Kjeld rode his bike to clear his mind. It helped to calm him. Every morning Susanne wrote a few lines in her diary and researched uplifting quotes online, which she used to look up for use in greeting and birthday cards.

  On 25 May she wrote in her diary: ‘I survived the time before last and I survived the last time, so I will have to survive now to survive next time.’

  They finally told their immediate family that Daniel had been kidnapped. They also told Christina, whom they had put off with white lies until now. She wept and made herself refrain from googling stories about Syria. It was too frightening.

  · * ·

  Daniel felt hands on his neck and shoulders. Some people were holding him up, others fiddled with the chain. For a brief moment he thought God’s hand was lifting him up towards the light – until someone threw cold water on his face. He was reluctant to wake up, but moved his head instinctively when a boot threatened to step on it.

  The guards broke out in cheers: their hostage was alive and kicking. They celebrated by beating him with a plastic tube, which bent around his tormented body, and then they left him tied to the radiator in the room.

  They had tortured, starved and drained him of all humanity. He was no longer himself. He had jumped as high as he could so that the chain would break his neck, but his head remained intact on his shoulders and the guards were celebrating because he was still alive. Had the child in the doorway given him away? Maybe they wanted to kill him themselves? Maybe he had actually wanted the child to raise the alarm? He didn’t know.

  Once he was alone again, he tried to reach the bag filled with cans of Coke in the hope that he might find something to drink.

  His feet could just about touch the bag, but he couldn’t move it. Over by the bed, he saw a half-filled water bottle, which lay there shining like a miracle. Water. Using the outer edge of his big toe, he managed to reach it. He drank the few gulps that were left in the bottle, looked around the room and suddenly realized that there was no glass in the window frame.

  Instead, there were rolled-down metal shutters on the outside of the window. They were partially destroyed in one corner and a piece of cardboard had been pasted over to obscure the view of the outside world. He also caught sight of an old lampshade in the nearest corner. It resembled the lamp his grandmother had at home with a fringe dangling around the bottom of the shade.

  Before leaving for his trip to Syria he had seen the film Rescue Dawn starring Christian Bale as an American pilot who is taken hostage during the Vietnam War. In the film Bale uses a nail to work open his handcuffs, allowing him to escape the torture camp.

  Daniel thought of this scene as he contemplated the old lampshade on the floor. He pulled it towards him with his feet. Perhaps things could work out in real life as they did in the movies.

  He took his time jiggling and fiddling with the lampshade’s metal spokes and eventually managed to break a piece off the shade that was about seven centimetres long. He inserted the end of the metal into a hole in the handcuffs so he could bend it slightly. It formed the shape of a key, which he might be able to use in the same way as Christian Bale’s nail.

  Daniel stuck the metal into the handcuff lock and turned it. He fiddled with it for several hours at different angles until finally, he heard a click: the lock was open.

  He sat quietly for a moment. The only thing he knew for certain was that he was on the first floor and could
jump out of the window, but he had no idea how far down it was, nor what was outside the house. It didn’t matter. He just wanted out. Better to die on the run than live under torture.

  Daylight penetrated the holes in the metal shutters, forming cones of light on the floor. Daniel heard the day’s first call to prayer as he removed the cardboard and climbed through the corner of the window frame where the shutters were broken. He pushed himself through until he was finally standing on a small balcony.

  It was low enough for him to jump, so he crawled over the railing, stretched himself out and dangled his legs in the air before he let go and landed on his bare, swollen feet in a pile of branches.

  He scanned the horizon for somewhere to run for cover, but could see only gangly, leafless trees and an empty building to the right. Next to the trees was a dirt road and he chose this as his escape route, even though he was well aware that he would practically light up like a beacon in the middle of the flat, light-brown landscape with his blue shirt and black jeans that stank of dried urine.

  When he had run a short distance, Daniel could make out something that looked like a leaky old water tower. Instinctively, he headed towards the water jet that was leaking out of the tower. He stood under the water, drank it and became soaking wet. Time was of the essence, but he wouldn’t last long as a prisoner on the run without any water.

  He continued down the dirt track for a while, but the buildings on both sides were surrounded by tall walls, which made it impossible to hide. The road split and as he made a left, he could see a man watching him from a window. He also passed two women who tried to make contact with him and he shouted as naturally as possible ‘mafi mushkila’, ‘no problem’, before he followed the wall around the corner to the right. The stones cut his feet. It felt surreal to be free.

  Around the corner he caught sight of a hole in a wall, where there was just enough space for a body of his size to squeeze through. He crawled through it and came out in a garden with tall grass in front of a house. For a moment he stood still and breathed deeply. In the grass in front of him was a pair of old trousers filled with what looked like sticks of dynamite. A feeling of panic set in, he felt trapped. The women could have alerted someone about the blond man they had seen running around barefoot in the neighbourhood.

  He clambered back through the hole and ran further down the dirt road towards a more open landscape. His scratched feet left a bloody trail behind them, and the neighbourhood was about to wake up. He could make out a few scattered settlements on the horizon, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to run for several kilometres. Instead, he ran out into a cornfield, where he threw himself on his knees and took off his blue shirt to camouflage himself and proceeded to crawl forwards on his elbows.

  He could feel the dry earth clods and rocks scraping against his naked torso. However, he couldn’t carry on in a straight line because the corn was too low in some places to conceal him.

  Suddenly he heard voices from somewhere behind him. He stopped crawling and lay completely flat on the ground for a moment, before he curled up in a foetal position and waited for the voices to disappear.

  It sounded as if several men were talking together as they stamped about in the corn. Daniel leaned forwards slightly to see where they were and discovered that there was a man standing right next to him. When the man looked at him, straight in the eye, Daniel leapt up in a split second and sprinted further into the cornfield.

  The men behind him were now shouting loudly in Arabic, and his legs were heavy, as if he were running on a cushion. He heard gunfire. Bullets whizzed past his ears. Daniel threw himself to the ground in a mixture of exhaustion and fear of being hit. Men he didn’t recognize bent over him.

  ‘I am Daniel, from Denmark,’ he panted, and he told them they would get money if they helped him over the border into Turkey. A short, fat man tied his hands behind his back and lost control of his gun, which went off into the ground. Daniel almost smiled. If they were such amateurs, he thought, he might be able to persuade them to drive him towards Turkey.

  They put him into the back seat of a car parked on an adjacent road and drove in the direction he had just been running from.

  The car stopped at a sand-coloured house surrounded by a wall. They led him down into a cellar, where they provided him with a bottle of water that had been in the freezer and a cigarette.

  Daniel inhaled the cold water and cigarette, while he showed them the bruises on his torso and neck. They didn’t speak any English, but seemed to understand. Did they also understand that he wanted to go home?

  They threw him back into the car, in the trunk this time, and drove for quite a while. They made short stops along the way – it sounded like they were buying groceries.

  They pulled him down into another cellar – a kind of banqueting hall, where weddings might be held. There were oversized Arab sofas lined up against the walls. Daniel was allowed to have his hands untied to go to the toilet and wash himself. They gave him an extra-large pullover to wear.

  A couple of kind older men came by with chocolate, coffee, biscuits and water. Daniel began to believe he might see his mother again. Some boys came along wearing Arsenal jerseys and studied him closely, along with the rest of the gathering, as he once again displayed his various marks and scars. Until a voice made him shudder.

  ‘Helloooo Daniel. We’ve missed you. Where have you been?’

  His tormentor, Abu Hurraya, stood in the doorway, handcuffs at the ready.

  · * ·

  A piercing pain jolted Daniel’s body. The handcuffs had been tightened so much that they cut into his skin, while the torturer led him to a water pipe that ran vertically between floors.

  ‘Welcome back!’ shouted Abu Hurraya.

  Daniel’s escape had been a total failure. He had been driven back to the building where he’d been detained. The biscuits and water had been only a fleeting pleasure. Ultimately, someone had called Abu Hurraya. Maybe they didn’t dare take the risk of helping a foreigner. Perhaps the locals were also afraid of ending up like him.

  Abu Hurraya’s men put shackles around his left ankle and locked it to the pipe, while his upper body was fastened to the pipe with thick chains. A prison guard put a plastic fastener of the type electricians use to hold cables together around Daniel’s neck and tightened it. The plastic strip pierced his skin in the same way as the handcuffs. He had difficulty breathing and soon passed out, so the guard took it off.

  The following three days he spent chained to the pipe merged into a blur. He had reached a state of total exhaustion. Three weeks had now passed since he had been captured and he was starving, thirsty and urinating in his trousers. His body simply couldn’t take it any more. The heavy chains forced him into an awkward, half-standing position. The kicks and blows that he regularly received to his ribs no longer hurt, but the handcuffs did. It felt as if the metal had cut through his skin and was now directly scraping against his open wounds.

  The guards turned up in groups and egged each other on, shouting and screaming that he was going to die. They played games in which they kicked, beat and whipped Daniel across the chest until he finally confessed that he was a spy, which they so badly wanted to hear.

  Daniel fainted. When he woke up, he thought he was at home with his grandmother at her yellow house in Hedegård. Then he lost consciousness again and dreamed that he was going to be killed by gunfire out in the cornfield.

  At one point he stirred at the sound of chairs scraping around him and he could hear an unfamiliar, deeper, slightly older voice. Maybe this was who the others had been waiting for. Maybe now he was going to find out what real torture felt like.

  The voice spoke Arabic with a different and lighter tone. The older man suddenly moved towards Daniel and loosened the chains, so he could sit. Daniel wept with joy. Tears streamed underneath the blindfold and down his cheeks as he slumped on the floor. It was
confusing to think someone was being nice to him.

  ‘Water,’ asked Daniel.

  The kind man filled a water bottle, which Daniel finished, then asked for more. Daniel was also given a couple of puffs on a cigarette – the other captors usually didn’t smoke. He knew that the man was sharing his cigarette out of kindness, without his superiors’ knowledge.

  Daniel ate what seemed like life-saving biscuits until his mouth was dry and he had to drink more water. Then, lying on the floor, he drifted into a nightmare-free sleep. He awoke to a beating by Abu Hurraya. The friendly man had disappeared, leaving only the torturer in his stead.

  Abu Hurraya ordered him to stand on one leg, but Daniel could not and collapsed on the floor. Then he had to lie on his back and stretch his legs backwards over his head and get up on his feet again. Abu Hurraya opened Daniel’s trousers, pulled them down and pressed something that felt like a candle against Daniel’s buttocks. Daniel was on the verge of fainting from fear. Abu Hurraya spoke Arabic and Daniel sensed that he was talking about his genitals while he squeezed one of his testicles very tightly.

  Daniel screamed and the fear turned into rage. He wanted to kill him. It was the first time that he had ever wanted to kill someone.

  ‘Daniel jahass!’ shouted Abu Hurraya, using the Arabic word for donkey or mule, while he pulled Daniel’s trousers up again and disappeared.

  Daniel pissed himself and someone came to mop up the floor.

  · * ·

  It was the middle of the day and the heat was rising from the asphalt. Daniel was led out of the building blindfolded and thrown into the back of a box van. Soon, more prisoners were piled into the van on top of him.

  They all reeked of sweat and their weight pressed on to his hands, making his handcuffs dig even deeper into his raw flesh. He tried turning to spare his wrists, while the van bumped along, but it hurt so much that he decided he would rather be knocked about.