Daniel immediately took to Pierre, who, as a marine biologist, could give him advice about nutrition and bacteria.

‘You’re far too thin,’ he said to Daniel, who looked like a scarecrow. Daniel’s eyes stared out from deep, dark holes and Pierre felt he could see all the way into Daniel’s brain.

‘What happened to your wrist?’ asked Pierre, and Daniel felt the urge to cry over someone wanting to hear his story.

The ceiling fan made such a noise that they couldn’t hear what was going on in the corridor. It was hard to tell if it was day or night, because the only light came from a naked light bulb. Unlike Daniel, Pierre and Nicolas spoke to the guards quite a lot. The Frenchmen hadn’t been exposed to as much violence as Daniel and therefore dared to express their needs. For example, they asked the guard (whom they called ‘Abu Gold Watch’ between themselves, because of his big gold watch) if they could have toothbrushes. Even though the answer was no, Daniel was surprised that they had asked. Most of the time, he tried to make himself invisible to the guards, who nevertheless singled him out by asking him to perform such actions as banging himself on the head with a shoe a hundred times.

Pierre advised Daniel not to play along with the guards’ humiliations.

‘You have to be more boring and pretend you don’t understand anything.’

‘I can’t just start ignoring them from one day to the next,’ said Daniel.

He realized that Pierre was trying to make him stronger and thus less subject to the whims of the guards. One day, when he wanted to teach Pierre the proper technique to do a push-up and couldn’t even lift his body off the floor, he knew he had to regain his strength to survive.

He started training. Before lunch he strengthened his torso and before dinner he exercised his legs. Pierre took part in the exercises and at night they lay side by side on their blankets and talked.

Their daily training was interrupted briefly by a guard who wanted to photograph Daniel.

‘Could you two exchange clothing for a moment?’ asked the guard, pointing at Daniel’s military clothing and Pierre’s white shirt, wand can you do something about your hair?’

Daniel pulled Pierre’s shirt over his head. It was too big for his narrow shoulders, but looked nicer than the military jacket, which gave the impression he was a combatant.

He was taken out to the corridor and had his photograph taken. There were no questions and no label, so he was unsure whether the photo would be used as proof of life. Nevertheless, he tried to send a message home – a smile. He hoped that the smile would reassure his family in Hedegård if they ever got to see the photograph.

Daniel and Pierre had just managed to work out an exercise routine when they were moved to a larger cell under the children’s hospital, where there were four more western hostages: Didier and Edouard, and David and Federico. There were now a total of seven westerners in the same cell. It was the first time that Daniel had met the two aid workers.

David was British, while Federico was Italian. They had come to Syria together as aid workers to find suitable places to establish refugee camps for the rapidly growing number of internally displaced refugees. In the spring of 2013 they had been attacked by masked men on a road in northern Syria and they hadn’t stood a chance.

David was thin and had such a full beard that he reminded Daniel of a caveman. Federico was young and taciturn. They told him that they were receiving much better treatment than they had before. Neither of them went into further detail about what had happened to them.

Finally, after more than two months in captivity, Daniel no longer stuck out as the blond westerner among the Syrian prisoners; at last he had some people to talk to who understood him. Together they could try to make the best of the terrible situation they were in. But after a few days, Daniel saw that any solidarity had been replaced by an internal hierarchy, just as it had been when he sat in the cell with the Syrian prisoners. In the cell, the seven hostages arranged their sleeping areas along the walls. Daniel was given a place closest to the door and right by the buckets where they shat. He knew he belonged to the lower half of the hierarchy, otherwise he wouldn’t be forced to sleep by the toilet buckets, which was regarded as an almost radioactive area in the cell. Moreover, it was unpleasant to be close to the door and the unpredictable guards who barged in several times a day. At least Pierre lay next to him, which made Daniel feel safe.

The ranking was also defined with the help of the kidnappers. The guards ordered the cell to appoint an ‘emir’, who would speak on behalf of everybody. The title went to the Frenchman Didier, because he was the oldest among them. One of his tasks was to decide what the prisoners should try to get the prison guards to deliver.

‘We should ask for more food,’ suggested someone.

‘No, what about soap? We must show that we care about our hygiene,’ said another.

‘Toothbrushes!’ shouted a third.

Daniel said that he didn’t need anything.

‘I’m just happy not to be hanging from the ceiling,’ he remarked. ‘For me, it’s important to regain my strength and get some exercise.’

The heat in the room was oppressive. Even though there was a fan, the air felt so still that some of Daniel’s co-prisoners complained that it would be dangerous for them all if he began exercising and sweating too much in such an enclosed space.

He disagreed, but worked out a plan. When the morning sun hit the fan, it cast an orange beam of light on the wall just above him. Then he got up and did strength and balance exercises on his blanket, while watching the beam move from the wall above him and down across the floor. When it hit Nicolas’s feet, Daniel would have to finish his gymnastics, because the others would begin waking up. The complaining stopped.

Outside the cell, there was more and more fighting. They could hear the deafening sound of bombs and firing near the children’s hospital. The war was moving closer, but Daniel didn’t care. He devoted all his energy thinking about mealtimes, when he would suddenly see sides of himself he didn’t much like.

They were given too little to eat and he felt a constant gnawing hunger that was driving him mad. If the guards forgot to come with food, his whole body filled with anxiety. Lately, some French-speaking fighters had been in charge of taking care of the prisoners and they had not been generous types. They sometimes withheld meals, so Daniel ate like a dog, hoarding and grabbing things from the other rations when the food was finally brought in. Heated arguments arose about who was stealing food from whom, and Daniel invented a technique whereby he swallowed the food almost instantly to hide how much he was eating, and defended himself by saying that he was too thin. He greedily licked his metal plate for the smallest crumb, while others became surly, withdrawing from the disagreements and refusing to eat. Several of them pointed to Daniel as the villain.

The only peace around mealtimes came when seven chunks of bread and seven boiled eggs were handed out.

The prisoners in the cell had been given a pen to share and rules were soon agreed as to when it might be used and for what. Daniel was given permission to use it to design a chess game, which he sat in a corner to make. He broke small pieces off the penicillin package that he had brought with him from cell to cell. He used the pen to draw the king, queen and pawns, but when he wanted fill in the black pieces, some argued that it was an unnecessary waste of ink.

The chess set was his new pastime and at night Daniel and Pierre lay close to each other on their blankets and played, while having whispering conversations about their lives and families.