The ISIS Hostage

by Puk Damsgård

  Bashir smiled at him and told him in English about his son, who was at university, and his two wives, who were good friends, even though they shared a husband. The guards told Bashir that they had imprisoned that son and one of his wives. He cried every time he prayed, fearing the worst.

  ‘They aren’t real people. They are insane,’ Bashir sobbed. He was convinced that he would never get out alive. ‘I wish the revolution had never begun,’ he said. ‘The only ones still fighting are the bandits. The good people left long ago.’

  The walking helped and, soon enough, Daniel was pacing back and forth on the floor for hours talking to himself. He played several voices at once, and he imagined that God was one of them.

  Good morning, Daniel.

  Good morning.

  How are you?

  I’m fine, thanks. I’m in a room where there is plenty of space and I get food twice a day. I can go to the toilet when I want to. My stomach feels better and I have a wonderful family and girlfriend.

  What would you like to do when you get back home?

  I would like to see my family and Signe first, of course. And then I would really like to find a permanent place to live in Copenhagen.

  How would you furnish it?

  I want to buy a printer, so I can print some photos. Then I could build some cushioned stools and a big, beautiful wooden desk. I would give my younger sister a rail pass for her birthday, so that she can come and visit whenever she wants. Signe could move in with me and then my family can come for Christmas.

  What will you eat?

  Well, I’d really like to learn how to cook duck. My mother could teach me her recipe.

  When he felt pain in the back of his knees, he lay with his legs up the wall and observed the motley crew of prisoners, who were regularly being replaced with new people. Two Kurds had been captured and were accused of having shot some Islamists. One of them was small and lively, the other one thin and frightened and Daniel couldn’t help but look at a strange hole in the base of his nose where mucus leaked out. He reeks of beatings, thought Daniel, who had learned first-hand how torture makes the body smell.

  A hierarchy quickly formed among the prisoners, which made Daniel uneasy. They behaved like guards towards each other, where the strong ones made decisions and the weak ones were exploited. The smelly Kurd was treated like a slave and forced to massage the superiors and wash their plates. In general, Kurds were always at the bottom of the hierarchy, purely because they were Kurds. Daniel enjoyed a certain status, because he symbolized a ticket to the West and also because he had been imprisoned the longest. But the hierarchy could change in a flash. If a prison guard selected one of them as a scapegoat, the others kept their distance, so as not to be associated with him. Bashir was always at the top, though, because he had the greatest reserves of energy.

  Occasionally, the internal pecking order would be replaced by a community of equal standing, like the time when a new prisoner was thrown into the cell. He was about eighteen to twenty years old. His body was black and blue; his clothes were torn to shreds and he couldn’t walk or eat. Together they dragged the new man into the bathroom, where they washed him and his clothes. Survival sometimes depended on forgetting one’s own suffering and helping others who were worse off.

  · * ·

  In order to pay the $700,000 that Daniel’s family had borrowed from the bank, they needed a proof of life, so as to be certain that those who were demanding the money really had Daniel – and that he was alive.

  Arthur’s local assistant, Majeed, was trying to get permission to see Daniel in the prison and to take a photograph of him. Majeed drove to Aleppo on numerous occasions, until one day he was finally allowed to meet the Dutchman Abu Ubaidah.

  Abu Ubaidah was slight, calm and subdued. He listened more than he spoke and when he opened his mouth he chose his words carefully, which Majeed found unusual in such a setting. Abu Ubaidah didn’t reveal whether or not he knew of Daniel, but told Majeed he would have to wait to talk to Abu Athir.

  Majeed waited for two days. When Abu Athir finally showed up, his bodyguard, who wore a suicide vest, immediately took Majeed aside and said, ‘How dare you approach the Emir of Aleppo!’ The bodyguard dragged Majeed down into a basement, where he was frisked before being allowed to speak to the emir.

  ‘Have you come here to ask about an infidel?’ asked Abu Athir suspiciously.

  Majeed explained that he wanted to take a proof-of-life photograph of Daniel; Abu Athir consented.

  On 30 June Majeed was driven to the prison under the children’s hospital. When he arrived, he wrote down his name and the date on a piece of notebook paper, which he handed over to Abu Ubaidah. He wasn’t going to be allowed to take the photograph himself.

  · * ·

  A masked man wearing a tracksuit came into the cell. He held a camera and a piece of paper. He made Daniel stand against the wall and ordered him to hold the piece of paper in front of him, on which a name and date were written.

  30/6/2013. Majeed.

  There were a couple of clicks from the camera and the masked man disappeared just as quickly as he had come.

  Daniel had no idea who Majeed was.

  · * ·

  The proof-of-life photo of Daniel with Majeed’s note was delivered to Arthur on a USB memory stick. It was the first tangible proof that the people they were dealing with had access to Daniel. It was now more than fifty days since Daniel had been kidnapped.

  Arthur asked the crisis psychologist who had been allocated to Daniel’s family to drive to Hedegård and show them the photograph. Kjeld, Susanne, Christina, Anita and Anita’s boyfriend were sitting around the table in the kitchen when the crisis psychologist placed it in front of them.

  ‘He’s alive,’ thought Susanne when she saw the photograph of Daniel. ‘He’s alive, but his eyes are dark and tired.’

  Christina began to cry and looked at the others’ stony faces. As the tears ran down her face, it irritated her that she was the only one who was crying.

  Daniel had become thin. His shoulders had almost disappeared and his chest was flat under the camouflage jacket, but the family reassured themselves with the thought that it was most likely Daniel’s muscles that had shrunk. As Susanne wrote in her diary, ‘Everyone knows that the muscles disappear quickly, and fortunately he is in really good shape.’

  The psychologist emphasized Daniel’s clean nails.

  ‘It’s a bad sign if he isn’t able to keep himself clean,’ she said. Susanne thought that Daniel looked frightened and tired, but the psychologist pointed to the whites of his eyes. It meant he was getting enough fluids.

  It was also comforting to know that by sending the proof of life, the kidnappers apparently believed that Daniel was worth a lot of money and they weren’t about to risk losing thousands of dollars.

  No one mentioned the visible wounds on his right wrist and the scars discernible on his neck; at least, not out loud. Anita didn’t talk about the wounds until she was sitting in the car with her boyfriend on the way home to Odense. That was when she realized for the first time how serious the situation was. Or, as Susanne wrote in her diary that evening: ‘If the seriousness of the situation hadn’t been clear to us all before, it certainly hit us the moment we saw the photo.’ She didn’t write anything about Daniel’s wrists.

  · * ·

  Tomatoes. Onions. Cucumbers. Olives. Daniel greedily ate the vegetables that Bashir had earned for the cell. When he washed the metal plates in the bathroom after meals, the guards gave him extra food, which they all shared. Daniel’s day consisted predominantly of his walks in the cell and long talks with Bashir. It was no longer Daniel who was beaten by the guards, but his fellow prisoners. He sat facing the wall and waited until the beatings of the Kurds and some of the others were over. He got nothing more than a few punches in the ribs or a slap around the head, and
he got the feeling that the guards had been told not to beat him.

  His body was beginning to recover and he was comforted by the fact that he had participated in one proof-of-life video and had had his photo taken. There was something happening around him that he only got confirmation of when a guard came into the cell one day and said, ‘Daniel, you’re on your way out.’

  Almost every day something happened in the cell which made it difficult for Daniel to find peace, and his mood swung up and down. One day the door opened and the guard spoke in Arabic with Bashir and his friend. Afterwards, Bashir sank down on the rug, clearly affected by the conversation. Daniel went over and asked him what had happened.

  ‘We have to make a video,’ he began. Bashir talked about his possible death sentence. He and his friend would have to claim their allegiance to the Syrian regime in a video. They would have to say how they had helped in the bombing of civilians in Aleppo. The guard said that they would be killed if they didn’t cooperate in the propaganda video, which was intended to show that the kidnappers had imprisoned some of the regime’s supporters.

  The video would lead to Bashir’s certain death, whatever he did. If other rebel groups saw it, they would kill him for supporting the regime. If he refused to appear in it, he would be shot by his captors.

  Before Bashir left the cell, Daniel asked him for a favour. If Bashir were released, he was to write to Christina and Signe and say that Daniel was fine. They exchanged email addresses and Daniel repeated Bashir’s to himself over and over, so that he would remember it.

  Bashir and his friend were taken away and Daniel never saw them again. He feared for them; he missed their company and felt lonely and far away from everything familiar. All his doubts resurfaced. Maybe he wasn’t on his way home after all.

  Instead, the prison guards started to worry about his wrist. A doctor rubbed iodine on it and bandaged it and while Daniel stood with his hands against the wall, they exposed one of his buttocks and gave him a shot of antibiotics. They were clearly interested in keeping their hostage alive, but how long would they hold him?

  Daniel was trying to walk away his worries, eighteen steps back and forth, when he suddenly got an unexpected visitor from Denmark.

  The heavy metal door opened and he was ordered to put on his blindfold. He tied it as loosely around his head as possible.

  ‘Come with me,’ said the guard.

  Daniel was made to stand against the wall in the corridor, where he could just make out the toes of four boots under the blindfold, standing right in front of him. Suddenly someone spoke Danish to him.

  ‘Where do you live in Denmark?’ asked a voice, which sounded young.

  ‘I live in Copenhagen,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’ asked another voice that sounded just as young – from his accent, Daniel suspected the man had been born and raised in Copenhagen.

  ‘Yes, I have an older sister and a younger sister.’

  The Danes seemed to be carefree and in high spirits; they were chuckling and Daniel was irritated by the thought that they had come just to see the Danish zoo animal in the basement.

  ‘Do you think we can get two million euros for you?’ asked one.

  ‘The Danish government doesn’t negotiate,’ said Daniel, and he told them that his father was a lorry driver and his mother a hairdresser. Two million euros was a massive sum for them.

  ‘I really don’t think you can get that much,’ added Daniel.

  ‘Is there any information you can give us about your family?’ demanded the other one.

  Daniel gave them the information that he could remember; telephone numbers for Susanne and Kjeld and email addresses for his sister and Signe. He tried to make sense of the fact that there were two Danish-speaking boys in an Islamist prison in Syria, quizzing a kidnapped compatriot.

  ‘What about your elder sister?’ asked one of them. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘OK, do you think we can get married to her?’

  ‘You’ll have to talk to my father about that,’ said Daniel.

  ‘She’s blond, isn’t she?’

  The question sounded more like a statement and the two Danes disappeared.

  Daniel had noticed several Europeans in the network that was holding him captive. Even though he had been kidnapped by Islamic extremists in the midst of a civil war in Syria, a number of those whom he saw wearing hoods spoke French and English – and even Danish. The torturers, the guards and the kidnappers were either a product of the Syrian regime, the Iraq War or of life in Europe. Several thousand Europeans, such as the Belgian Jejoen, had travelled without the slightest hindrance over the border from Turkey, and some ended up working for the same man who was making the final decisions about Daniel: Abu Athir, the Emir of Aleppo.

  In other words, there was a four-lane motorway from the heart of Europe to the caliphate.

  · * ·

  The background of the photograph of Abu Athir was bursting with bright-green fruit trees. The sun was shining and at the emir’s side was one of his European disciples. It looked as if they were at an idyllic spot in the Syrian countryside as they stood next to each other, smiling for the camera. Abu Athir’s black hair billowed and disappeared behind his shoulders. His face was wrapped in an abundant, thick beard, broken only by a wide smile that exposed a set of snow-white teeth with two pointed canines in his upper jaw. His tight-fitting, black wool hat made him look like a hipster and his eyebrows formed a slight unibrow over his wide nose. The day the picture was taken Abu Athir was wearing a beige tunic unbuttoned at the neck, with a grey shirt underneath and practical outdoor trousers from the Swedish brand Fjällräven. He was much taller than the Frenchman beside him. The Belgian combatant Jejoen, who had come to Syria to take part in the war under the emir’s command, looked at the picture for a long time. He was fascinated by Abu Athir and there was general agreement among the Europeans that the emir was especially tough, but approachable.

  You had to earn his trust, however, which is where Jejoen was having problems. Abu Athir was suspicious of him, because Jejoen’s father Dimitri was travelling around Syria looking for his son, which meant that Jejoen’s Syrian comrades suspected him of being a spy. They had found a message on Jejoen’s mobile from his father, who had mentioned some Israeli contacts. At the risk of his own life, his father had visited one rebel leader after another, including the great emir Abu Athir, who briefly detained him.

  No one understood how he was released alive, but the messages and his father’s search raised suspicions about Jejoen, who was placed under house arrest in Abu Athir’s prison in the basement of the children’s hospital.

  · * ·

  Daniel was trying desperately to get a message home to Hedegård.

  There was a new Syrian prisoner in the cell. He had been accused of having sex with his brother’s wife, because he had been seen alone with her. The judge had looked mercifully on this transgression and the Syrian was to be released once he had received his punishment: a whipping.

  Daniel tore a piece off a box of penicillin tablets and wrote a message to Signe and Christina with a pen borrowed from one of the other prisoners. He wrote that he was fine, was being fed every day and had access to a toilet. They shouldn’t worry and he was sorry that he had put them in such a situation. Daniel gave the Syrian man their email addresses, so he could send the Danish message to them if he ever got the chance.

  He folded the fragment of paper and the Syrian stuffed it in his back pocket.

  ‘What about in your underpants or socks?’ suggested Daniel. ‘A less obvious place?’

  A few days after the Syrian had been released, the guards moved Daniel to a new room further down the corridor. It was a boiler room directly opposite the toilet that prisoners used if their cell didn’t have one.

  It was arou
nd 17 July and Daniel had been imprisoned for two months.

  · * ·

  Susanne and Kjeld’s bank loan of 3.7 million kroner had been converted into US dollar bills by the Danish National Bank. They were now stacked and ready for payment with Arthur in Turkey, who, with cash in hand, was going to get Daniel back home.

  But the communication with to the kidnappers had cooled. Despite intense pressure, Arthur couldn’t get the practical details in place on how the money should be handed over. It seemed to him as if those responsible had lost interest in closing the matter, and his network wasn’t having any luck in obtaining clear answers.

  The reason was probably that the relationship had become strained between Abu Suheib, the Iraqi head of ISIS in Azaz, who had taken Daniel captive, and Abu Athir, the Emir of Aleppo. For Arthur, it was crucial that the person he was negotiating with also had the keys to Daniel’s cell. He sensed that the Iraqi was interested in negotiating a release, while Abu Athir seemed to want to hang on to Daniel. And Abu Athir had the keys.

  At the same time the war was raging in and around Aleppo, where Daniel was being held. The insurgent groups were fighting among themselves and against the Assad regime, which continued to bomb the populous city.

  An increasing number of reports were coming in that poison gas was being used against the rebel-controlled areas. In Raqqa, a city north-east of Aleppo that the rebels had taken control of in March 2013, there were rumours that ISIS was winning more influence and had pushed out Jabhat al-Nusra and the other factions.

  Susanne and Kjeld followed the news from Syria and feared for Daniel, sitting imprisoned in the midst of war. They watched powerlessly as the bombs fell on Aleppo.

  · * ·

  Daniel was in the boiler room with seven Syrians. A couple of them were in their teens, while others were family men in their forties who didn’t speak a word of English. However, there was one young man in his twenties with whom Daniel could communicate and play games. They scratched out a chequerboard on the concrete floor with a nail and used stones to represent the chequers. One player’s chequers were large stones, the other’s small ones. Daniel tried to disappear into the game and forget about the cords dangling from some pipes in the ceiling, and what they might be used for.