‘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.