The ISIS Hostage by Puk Damsgård

Author:Puk Damsgård
Language: ara, dan, deu, eng, eng, fra, ita, por
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 2016-06-07T14:29:56+00:00

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.

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