One night Tilak Raj will never forget

The guards had long stopped shadowing the hostages to the bathroom or calling out to them if they were inside for too long. But Tilak Raj shut himself in for nearly an hour.

‘‘I kept weeping and washing my face,’’ he said. ‘‘I am very close to my children and all three of them share a bed with me and my wife when I am home.’’

When he emerged, the guards could tell that he had been crying. ‘‘They told me it would all be over soon and I must be brave for my children’s sake,’’ he said.

Tilak Raj knew that the guards were just being nice and that they had no say in when he would be freed. But he resolved that if he ever reached home, he would buy Vishal a bicycle.

By now, he had become a little more fluent in Arabic and sometimes carried out long and meaningless conversations with the guards. ‘‘They said ‘Kuwaiti haraami’ (the Kuwaitis are bad),’’ he said. ‘‘They said ‘Indian good’.’’

They knew that India and Indira Gandhi had been good friends of Iraq. The guards also spent a lot of time cursing the Kuwaitis and the Americans.

Inside their makeshift prison, the Egyptian hostage had become a little quieter. When the ordeal first began, he had taken advantage of his fluency in Arabic to get close to the guards. The Indians used to think then that because he was Muslim and because he talked endlessly to them, the Egyptian would be spared till the end should their captors ever start executing the hostages.

But they formed a different impression when the heard the leaders of the outfit shouting at the Egyptian. ‘‘We knew then that he was as powerless as us,’’ said Antaryami. By the time they were moved to their fifth safe-house — they spent 8 to 10 days in each place except the first one, where they just stayed for a day — the hostages had taught themselves not to hope too fervently.

‘‘The first time we heard that our company KGL had accepted the demands and we were going to be freed, all of us were excited,’’ said Sukhdev. But freedom did not come and no explanations were offered. After one or two more false dawns, they settled down for a long wait.

Sukhdev says he lost track of time and dates. Their watches had been taken away till finally, in the fifth safe house, an alarm clock was placed in their room.

There were idle thoughts of escape but nothing serious because they had no hope of overpowering their guards and no chance of surviving in Fallujah even if some miracle helped them flee the house.

So Sukhdev did some sums to pass the time. He had reached Kuwait on April 21, earned just over Rs 30,000 in his three months there and saved about Rs 20,000 of them. But his family had spent about a lakh of rupees on his trip so he figured he had lost about Rs 80,000.

Then one day, the hostages realised just how easily they could lose their lives too.

The guards were watching television. Suddenly, they got excited and called the hostages to join them. On the screen were bodies of the 12 Nepalese who had been taken hostages and killed.

One guard put his hand to his throat and made a slicing motion. ‘‘We realised we could be next,’’ said Antaryami. All his old fears returned to haunt him.

(Tomorrow: Freedom comes in a van in Baghdad)

Part I: I wanted to cry

Part II: How Antaryami became Hussein, Tilak Raj, Abdullah and Sukhdev, Omar Ali

Part IV: They said jump…for the first time in 42 days, we saw the sun