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Journalism of Courage
The hostages — they knew their status by now — spent just one day in the first safe house. Sukhdev was glad when they moved to a new location. Kuwait had spoilt him a little.
Before this jinxed trip to Fallujah, he used to live in a complex of six-storeyed apartments in Kuwait where KGL put up its staff. He shared a four-room flat with 10 other drivers, it was fully air-conditioned. The first safe house, he complains, had only fans.
As fear receded, the sensation of discomfort grew.
Once again, the hostages were blindfolded, bundled into vehicles, and driven around for 15 minutes before they reached another Fallujah bungalow. This one was air-conditioned.
By now, KGL had accepted that the seven drivers were its employees and negotiations had begun. At first, the drivers diplomatically tried pumping their guards for information. After a while, they realised that the eight men who kept an eye on them were quite low in the pecking order and had no idea what was going on. Their usual response was “Inshallah”.
Conversations with the guards were complicated affairs. They usually spoke to the Egyptian driver who knew Arabic. The Egyptian, in turn, would try to communicate with Tilak Raj in a tortured combination of elementary Arabic and broken English. Tilak Raj, who had picked up some Arabic expressions in his seven months in Kuwait, would tell the other two Indians what he had gathered. No one spoke to the three Kenyans, who kept to themselves.
On Day Six, one of the guards screamed at Antaryami. This was a phase when everything centred around namaaz. The guards and the four Muslim prisoners prayed at 5.30 am, 1.30 pm, 5 pm, 8 pm and 9.30 pm, says Sukhdev. For the Indians, this was a way to keep track of time. They usually mumbled while the others were praying.
The guard found Antaryami looking distracted and shouted. Then he decreed that the Indians must pray, too. This posed a problem. The Indians didn’t know the words. Tilak Raj solved the problem.
“I asked for a pen and a piece of paper,” he said. “Then I asked the Egyptian to slowly repeat the words of the prayer to me. I copied what they sounded like in Hindi.”
Like back-benchers in a classroom, the Indians would try to somehow wing it at prayer time. The guards approved. They showed this by giving each Indian driver a Muslim name. This was partly because no matter how hard they tried, they could not say Antaryami.
So Antaryami became Hussein (as in Saddam), Tilak Raj was named Abdullah and Sukhdev answered to Omar Ali.
The other major distraction was bathing. The hostages were allowed to bathe once every three or four days as water was in short supply. Each had been provided one extra set of clothing, which they would wash when they bathed. Sometimes, the guards would let the prisoners watch TV. Most of the news was in Arabic, about the fighting in Iraq. “We could hear bullets being fired and explosions near our building,” says Sukhdev. But one day, they heard cheering.
The guards, who watched TV when they were not praying, had chanced upon a clip of Antaryami’s father, Ram Moorthy, appealing for his son’s release. Antaryami was scared. He hated being singled out. He had even placed his mattress near the middle of the room where he could be as inconspicuous as possible. By now he had made his peace with the guards, but he would get nervous every time the leaders of the group dropped by to see how the hostages wer doing.
One evening, some of them marched into the bungalow and told Antaryami to follow them. No instructions were given to anyone else. “I don’t know why they always picked on me,” says Antaryami.
He was driven to another bungalow and told to change into an orange outfit. The leaders were grim. A cameraman was ready. A gun was placed to Antaryami’s temple. “I thought they would kill me in front of the cameras,” says Antaryami. “I could hear two of them arguing. I think they were arguing about whether to kill me.”
It turned out to be another video clip to put pressure on KGL and Tilak Raj thinks Antaryami was never in danger. “How would he know what they were talking about?” he says. “He doesn’t speak Arabic. Anyway, when they took him away, one of them told us there was no need to worry.”
But for two hours, Antaryami shivered and sobbed. When he returned he laid down on his mattress and wept to himself. “They always singled me out,” he says.
Probably because he always looked terrified, says one of his fellow captives. Tilak Raj, the father figure in the group, spent hours trying to calm Antaryami down.
His own nightmare was not very far away.
(Tomorrow, Part 3: Tilak Raj’s night to forget)
Part I: I wanted to cry
Part III: One night Tilak Raj will never forget
Part IV: They said jump…for the first time in 42 days, we saw the sun
