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.’