‘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.

According to several reports, the Islamic Front, a gathering of various more or less moderate Syrian rebels, had so many fighters that they were rapidly advancing, especially in some districts of Aleppo and in areas around the town, where they took over control. At the same time, Assad regime troops were taking advantage of the internal struggle between the Syrian rebels and ISIS. Other reports described how the regime’s forces were advancing and trying to recapture parts of Aleppo’s industrial district, Sheikh Najjar, where the hostages were imprisoned.

The moderate insurgents had for a long time regarded ISIS as an enemy of their original revolution, which first and foremost was about overthrowing the Assad regime and stopping its oppression of the Sunni majority in Syria.

When ISIS made gains, they captured areas from other rebels, partly with the help of the Assad regime, which mainly attacked the moderate rebel positions rather than ISIS, and partly with help from the rebels’ own ranks, as some fighters joined the more powerful ISIS.

But patience was running out among the moderates and Daniel sensed some panic among their kidnappers when, one morning just one and a half weeks into January 2014, the hostages were blindfolded, handcuffed, thrown into the back of a truck and driven away.

There could no longer be any doubt that ISIS was facing pressure in the area where the hostages were being held, so they were hurriedly moving them.

They rumbled along some gravel roads for about fifteen minutes. When they arrived, they were allowed to take off their blindfolds and found themselves in an urban area none of them recogized. For once the cell wasn’t in a basement. There were windows out to a corridor and to the outside world, but the panes were covered. The hostages could see a tower on the horizon through a small hole in the cardboard.

Eighteen hostages were now assembled, among them the newly arrived Spanish journalists, the American aid worker and two others that Daniel hadn’t heard of or met before. A voice suddenly spoke Danish to him.

‘Hi, I’m Dan. I’m from Denmark.’

‘Hi Dan, I’m also from Denmark,’ said Daniel in English, caught off-guard after so many months and unable to find the Danish words.

‘You can just speak Danish,’ laughed Dan with his deep voice.

He had been kidnapped a few days earlier, along with four colleagues from MSF. Daniel stared in amazement at the Dane, who looked like a big teddy bear with his round cheeks, his bushy beard and long hair. He and his Belgian colleague were dressed in orange jumpsuits like the other hostages and Daniel felt that Dan, who was both broad and tall, was twice as big as him.

Dan told him that three of his female colleagues had been captured with them and were in the cell next door.

‘What’s happening in Denmark?’ asked Daniel.

‘Nothing in particular,’ said Dan.

Daniel had previously experienced how a new hostage could be in a state of shock, so he held back until Dan was ready to talk. But it wasn’t long before he and Dan were having long conversations together in Danish about both of them having been Scouts in the same Christian organization and how much fun it was to go out in Aarhus. Dan had been a volunteer at an annual music festival and they agreed that when they got out, they would go to the festival together.

Having an extra Dane in the group expanded Daniel’s mental space. They could speak freely about the other hostages and air their frustrations. Daniel had been listening to the French for months, while they spoke confidentially in their mother tongue about their fellow prisoners.

Oh boy, this is great, he thought, feeling closer to Denmark when chatting with Dan.

The cell looked like an office: it had a desk, shelves and parts of the floor were carpeted. Posters for household appliances were stuck up on the walls – one showed a picture of a piece of roast meat in an oven, while a woman stood to one side, smiling. The guards had tried to cover her face with a piece of cardboard, but it constantly fell down, so her smile came into view.

The Beatles were still part of their everyday life and eternal constant reminder that anything could happen. One day Daniel was sitting on the windowsill, while the others were arranging the blankets in the limited space. A guard saw him sitting by the covered window and thundered, ‘Why are you sitting on the windowsill? Are you about to escape? You’ve tried that before.’

The following evening the Beatles came in, led by John.

‘Squat in the middle of the floor,’ he ordered Daniel.

John had brought a sabre with him, of the type that Muslim armies had used in the Middle Ages. It was almost three foot long and had a silver handle. Daniel felt its sharp edge when the sabre was placed against his neck.

‘Have you tried to escape?’ shouted John threateningly.

Daniel explained that he had simply been sitting on the windowsill.

‘Do you want to lose your head?’

‘No,’ answered Daniel clearly.

‘You were lucky,’ said John, after the Beatles turned their attention to two other hostages, John and Peter.

They accused the two hostages of planning an escape, even though they had just been playing a quiz in which they had to name films that began with different letters. They were instructed to sit at opposite ends of the room.

The psychological torture was beginning to lose its effect. Mentally, Daniel had donned an iron vest, which tightened his emotions into an unwavering line. If he didn’t get too happy when the food came, too scared when a sabre was put to his neck and too sad when the proof-of-life pictures came to nothing, the whole situation became endurable. His mind had turned into a comfortable, grey mass, even when Paul was cramming verses from the Koran and the shahada (the Islamic declaration of faith) into the hostages to – as he put it – prepare them for death. Daniel numbly repeated the short phrases that formed the shahada: ‘I bear witness that there is no other god than Allah. He has no partners. And I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and messenger.’

On 19 January 2014 the cell received its nineteenth hostage, the British taxi driver Alan Henning from Manchester. Just after Christmas he had been taken by masked and armed men in the Syrian city of Adana outside Aleppo, when he was working as a voluntary aid worker.

It was the third time he had travelled in Syria as a volunteer for Aid for Syria and he had worked hard in his taxi to save enough money and earn time off to drive a relief convoy all the way down through Europe to Syria. His commitment to the war-torn country was kindled after he had held a Syrian baby in his arms in a refugee camp.

‘The way she looked at me. I felt terrible,’ explained Alan, who had ‘Aid for Syria’ tattooed on the inside of his wrist, while a carp graced one of his shoulders. He told Daniel that he loved to fish for carp and had taken his wife on a fishing trip on their honeymoon.