by Puk Damsgård
· * ·
On the morning of 23 December 2013 the guards came into the cell.
‘You’re going to be released now,’ one said and declared that the rich Gulf state of Qatar had paid €260 million for all thirteen foreign hostages.
‘You have ten minutes to get ready,’ was the message.
‘May we take anything with us?’ asked one of the prisoners and got a no in reply. The hostages did some quick calculations based on Qatar’s generous €260 million and laughed − they were worth more than 11 F-16 fighter aircraft. Deep down, everyone knew very well that they were probably just being taken to a new cell.
The prospect of a move created panic in Daniel and Pierre about what would become of their Christmas Eve treat, the bread and jam that they had been assembling for several weeks and was hidden between their sleeping places.
They decided to eat it straight away, so they split it into two equal pieces. Daniel feasted on the fatty, soft, sugary mass of old bread and lavish volumes of jam, margarine and butter. It was many more calories than he had taken in for several months. When the jam roll had been consumed, he pulled on a pair of Adidas trousers, Toni’s military tunic, a pair of socks and the far-too-small turquoise sandals.
The guards tied the hostages’ hands together with white plastic straps that cut into the skin. They were blindfolded and led out to a truck. Daniel lost his sandals on the way and felt a sugar rush rise up from his stomach, which was bubbling with a strange happiness. Tears ran down his cheeks, because he believed that he was going home – and minutes later because he thought he was going to die.
Suddenly, he felt an intense urge to go to the toilet, but it was too late. The truck had already started and the prisoners slid around each other in the cargo compartment. His stomach was gurgling, his mind racing, and he couldn’t stop crying.
When the truck finally stopped, Daniel imagined that they had come to a refugee camp and would soon be released. Someone took him by the arm and he stepped out with his right leg first – the leg which had not had a knee injury − into the uncertain depths, without having any idea of how far down the ground was. But he felt that there was a chair under him and he stepped onto it before he was in his stockinged feet on some gravel. A hand took his arm again and he felt someone run a finger along his neck in a sawing motion. So they probably weren’t going home.
With their hands bound, the hostages were lifted up by the arms so they were forced to walk on their toes and led into a room.
After a short time, they were taken out individually.
Some guards with masks asked Daniel to take off all his clothes. ‘My socks too?’
‘Yes, everything.’
Daniel’s stomach was rumbling as he stood naked on the chilly floor and was asked to bend forward and spread his buttocks. They apparently wanted to examine whether he had smuggled anything up his behind and he was terrified that he wouldn’t be able to hold himself while they inspected him.
Afterwards, they threw into his arms a two-part orange prison uniform with loose trousers and a thin shirt and he pulled it over his naked body. The body lice were gone with his old trousers. On reflection, he dared not imagine what it could mean that all of them were now dressed in Guantánamo-coloured suits.
‘It’s their dream,’ said James and related that, early in his captivity, the Beatles had told him that they were going to dress him in an orange prison uniform.
The hostages were divided into two groups. Daniel was relieved that he was put together with Pierre, James, Steven, John, Toni, Marc and Edouard in a large basement room with two small windows looking out on to a foyer, and with a proper toilet and shower.
The hostages were in the cell they soon dubbed the Five-Star Hotel.
· * ·
As usual at this time of year, Anita placed on the bookcase in the living room a small wooden church with an electric light. Her grandfather had made it back in the 1980s and, when she was a child, it had been on display at Hedegård every holiday season, lighting up a Christmas landscape of cotton wool. It had later become hers and it wasn’t really Christmas until it had been unpacked along with the other decorations.
The Rye family alternated where they stayed for Christmas Eve, and this year Anita was waiting for Susanne, Kjeld and Christina to come and spend Christmas with her and her boyfriend at their house in Odense. They arrived in the early afternoon and enjoyed a glass of port around the coffee table before helping out in the kitchen. On the menu was goose with caramelized potatoes and red cabbage, followed by the traditional Danish Christmas dessert of creamy rice pudding with chopped almonds.
Anita thought back to last year when the family had Skyped with Daniel during dinner, because he was in Russia. This Christmas she had hoped so much that he would have returned from Syria that she had transferred some money into his bank account as a Christmas present.
While they ate, they talked about Daniel, who last year had been looking out at them from the computer on the windowsill. This year it was Kjeld’s and Susanne’s phones that lay on the windowsill. Kjeld checked his mobile regularly in the hope that Daniel would be allowed to call home. Maybe the kidnappers would show some mercy on Christmas Eve and let him wish them a Merry Christmas. But the only thing that came in was a text message from Arthur:
Dear Both, Merry Christmas. I hope you can find some peace with your family, even if it won’t be the same this year. I’ve spoken to Alpha this evening. He hasn’t heard anything from our contacts, but I’ve asked him to answer the Skype message I sent. All the best to you. Best wishes, Arthur.
Kjeld replied:
OK, thanks Arthur. Merry Christmas to you and your family too.
Anita thought that Daniel wouldn’t have wanted them to just sink into a miserable heap, so they celebrated Christmas as they usually did. Kjeld got the whole almond in his rice pudding, so he won the special prize, which was a set of wooden salad utensils, and, after a relaxing walk round the neighbourhood to settle their stomachs, they danced around the Christmas tree. Susanne had not been looking forward to this Christmas tradition with such a significant person missing from the circle, but they ended as usual by singing ‘Now It’s Christmas Again’ and dancing in a chain all around the house, both inside and outside.
Susanne and Christina fell asleep at each end of the sofa, while Kjeld slept on an air mattress.
· * ·
On 24 December Daniel woke up early and washed himself under the ice-cold running water in the ‘five-star’ dungeon. He dressed in his lice-free orange prison uniform, which was too thin for the winter cold, and sat down on a mattress under a thick blanket.
A new prison guard, whom they called the Spanish Chef, soon brought some food into the cell. He got this nickname because he was responsible for their meals and he spoke a little Spanish. He was a tall, obliging man, even though he walked around in a suicide vest with a fuse hanging out in front. In addition to the vest, he wore what was, in the circumstances, a stylish jacket with matching trousers, and a waistcoat with pockets in which he placed rifle magazines.
When the Spanish Chef came into the cell, the hostages didn’t have to turn against the wall. He was happy to let them see his face and the braces on his teeth. He wanted them to see that he was a human being. He said that he was from Tunisia and reassured them that their release was just a matter of money. He served two pieces of bread to each hostage and placed a metal tray in front of them with tuna, sardines, cheese, hummus and onions.
‘Thank you,’ they said.
It was a feast.
‘You should thank God. It is He who gives,’ said the Spanish Chef and left the room.
Daniel’s thoughts went to his Christmas Eve the year before, when he had Skyped home from Russia. He missed his family and Signe, but wanted to have a good Christmas wherever he was.
Everyone in the cell seemed to be th
inking along the same lines and they agreed that the best gift they could give each other was honesty. A circle of orange-clad hostages took shape and they began to tell stories about each other.
Edouard said that he was Daniel’s Secret Santa and had put the tin foil boat by Daniel’s sleeping space. He also told them that he had deliberately distanced himself from Daniel when they had met in the cell under the children’s hospital, because Daniel had looked so damaged.
‘You were an indication of the worst that could happen,’ he admitted.
Daniel revealed that he was Steven’s Secret Santa and he told James that he had read about him before they had met in captivity; that he had seen photographs of someone he believed to be tough war reporter. He also said that he had been amused when he discovered that James was a klutz who lurched around the cell knocking over water bottles. Daniel thanked James for the massages and all the chats about women and dreams of the future – and for sticking to his values when people behaved unfairly.
‘You are quite simply a good human being, James,’ he noted.
They laughed about their first meeting in the toilet. James teased Daniel about how he had looked – he had stood behind the others with his tousled hair sticking out every which way and stared at James with his sunken eyes.
‘You looked like a frightened mouse,’ laughed James.
‘I noticed your underbite and thought you looked a little unintelligent,’ teased Daniel back.
They talked about their first attempts at gymnastics and laughed about how weak and pathetic they had been when they turned somersaults on the blankets, and the time James nearly broke his neck when he tried to stand on his head.
That night, Daniel crept under his blanket on the soft mattress and fell into a deep, carefree sleep. When he woke up the next morning, it was without the usual pain in his hip bone.
In Orange with a View of the World
The hostages looked at each other and laughed. Yet another British guard, whom none of them had met before, had just shown up in the Five-Star Hotel. He asked if they needed anything. They asked for extra blankets, after which he disappeared again. Even though he had nothing to do with the other three Brits, the hostages joked that he was the fourth and final member of the prison’s Beatles.
It was also Paul who gave them Koran lessons.
‘You can turn around and face me,’ he announced to their great surprise. They sat in a circle, while he went through various verses from the Koran in Arabic and encouraged them to ask questions. He was dressed in a hoodie and gloves and wore thick socks in his sandals.
Paul made greater demands on the converts than on the others. He told them which verse the Emir wanted them to be able to recite by heart and ended all his sentences with inshallah, God willing. His speech was neither political nor inflammatory, unlike the atmosphere that was created when the rest of the Beatles were there. They would suddenly enter the cell shouting ‘Takbir!’ to which the prisoners had to answer ‘Allahu akhbar!’ as loud as they could.
The Brits had also composed a verse to the melody of The Eagles’s 1977 hit ‘Hotel California’ and ordered the hostages to learn the verses by heart, so that they could sing the chorus:
Welcome to Osama’s lovely hotel,
Such a lovely place,
Such a lovely place.
You will never leave Osama’s lovely hotel,
And if you try, you will die, Mr Bigley-style.
Daniel sang along as best he could and James said he had sung it earlier in his captivity. But the reference to Mr Bigley was anything but funny. Kenneth John Bigley was a British civil engineer. In the autumn of 2004 he had been kidnapped in Baghdad, while working for a Kuwaiti construction company. The group that took him and two American colleagues was led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who later became the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq – the group that preceded ISIS.
A video put online on Islamist forums in 2004 showed the Islamists’ murder of Bigley. He sat in an orange prison uniform and was forced to read a manifesto out loud – after which his throat was cut. As a finale to the execution, the executioners placed his severed head on top of his body.
The video of the murder was so gory that it backfired among some of al-Qaeda’s supporters, who felt it went too far. Bigley’s body was never found.
Daniel was slowly regaining his strength. The Spanish Chef brought the prisoners food three times a day and Daniel was feeling full for once, and he was training more often. In true five-star-hotel-style, he was also given a toothbrush, toothpaste and lotion. It was the first time in more than six months that he had brushed his teeth and he let the Spanish Chef cut his hair with a shaver. Thin wisps that looked like wool lay on the floor afterwards and his scalp was nothing but dead skin that sprinkled down on to his shoulders when he touched the top of his head.
During the day on New Year’s Eve, the guards switched two hostages around, so Edouard and Sergei swapped cells. The Russian had new information for the prisoners in Daniel’s group. In the cell where he had been sitting, three more hostages had been brought in: two Spanish reporters, journalist Javier Espinosa and photographer Ricardo Vilanova, and an American aid worker, Peter Kassig. This meant that there were now a total of sixteen foreign hostages divided between the two rooms.
When New Year’s Eve arrived Daniel could hear what sounded like Syrian fireworks in the form of bombardments in the distance. They all went to bed early.
· * ·
On 27 December welcome news came to the Rye family. In the midst of the winter darkness, Daniel’s cousin had given birth to a little miracle – almost 9 lbs in weight and 20 inches long.
‘We’re still waiting,’ wrote Susanne in her diary about the absence of any sign of life from Daniel. ‘We find the waiting long and difficult, but when we think of how you must be experiencing the waiting, we realize we shouldn’t be complaining.’
Three days into the New Year, Susanne and Kjeld were sitting on the sofa watching television. Kjeld’s finger slid around on his iPad, when he suddenly exclaimed, ‘A Dane has been kidnapped in northern Syria, one from Médecins Sans Frontières, along with four of his colleagues!’
They switched over to the news channel, which was broadcasting a long report on the kidnapping. The names of the captives were not mentioned and it was unclear – at least publicly – who had taken the five representatives from Médecins Sans Frontières (known as MSF).
The organization, which was made up of doctors and nurses who treated people in the most dangerous places in the world, was a highly experienced one. No matter where they worked, MSF always cooperated with the local population, regardless of tribe, ethnicity or community. It was part of the job that anyone sent into the field had to be able to work in difficult areas, and something must have gone seriously wrong if, after several years’ presence throughout Syria, MSF had now had five employees kidnapped. It was a testament to the fact that no foreigners in Syria could feel assured of their safety, not even emissaries from a charitable organization that gave medical assistance to everyone.
Kjeld and Susanne feared what the media’s focus on the capture of a Danish aid worker in Syria might mean for the secrecy surrounding Daniel’s kidnapping. Kidnapping cases involving westerners were generally kept out of the news through a so-called media blackout. Most of the Danish newspapers and television stations knew about the kidnapping, but had agreed not to write about the case in the interest of Daniel’s safety.
Now and then, the international press published stories about ISIS keeping at least ten western hostages, and James Foley’s family had been running a public campaign to rescue him since January 2013, while the rest of the hostages remained anonymous.
It was usually up to the individual families if they wanted to break the silence. The media blackout didn’t necessarily help the situation, but it was often seen as a sensible precaution, since no one knew how
the kidnappers would respond to international publicity. It allowed those trying to get the hostages released to work in peace, and ensured that news articles didn’t motivate the kidnappers to raise the ransom money or make the hostages’ conditions worse.
Kjeld and Susanne were divided about the right thing to do. Susanne felt some relief at the thought that she would no longer have to tell lies to keep it a secret. If she spotted someone she knew out of the corner of her eye while shopping in the supermarket, she often had to flee in order to avoid a conversation.
Conversely, she and Kjeld were waiting for the kidnappers to contact them by email and they didn’t dare take the risk that Daniel’s possible release might be thwarted by the Danish and international media writing about the case, so together with Arthur, they decided to wait and see. To be on the safe side, Susanne drafted an email to be sent out to family, friends and neighbours in case the media chose to write about Daniel.
‘We don’t know what the newspapers will come out with,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘so it’s important they get the true story.’
That same day in Syria, a large-scale offensive began against ISIS.
· * ·
Daniel was sitting in the cell, listening to the enormous blasts from the falling bombs. The building shook and exchanges of gunfire echoed in the air. The prisoners were also feeling the physical effects of the attacks coming closer. Meals were sporadic and one morning they didn’t get any bread.
‘The fighting is too fierce,’ the guards explained. ‘We can’t get out to pick up food.’
Daniel wondered if ISIS was on the defensive. If so, he had no idea who was doing the attacking and what the situation was on the ground above his head. But it turned out he was right: other Syrian rebel groups had launched an offensive against ISIS around Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa. Fighters of the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front and Jabhat al-Nusra were all launching a war against ISIS.