I wanted to cry

Just past 11 am on July 21 in Fallujah, Antaryami started to cry.

He8217;s not the crying sort, he says, though sometimes as a child he would be driven to tears when others teased him about his name. It was chosen for him by a holy man who predicted great fame for him. But the taunts of his playmates had to be dealt with first, so Antaryami expunged his name8212;it means omniscient8212;from everywhere except his school and passport records. He started calling himself Rana.

No wonder then, that when fame came and journalists rushed to seek out his family, no one knew who Antaryami was. The truck driver with a surprisingly gentle face says he noticed tears running down his cheeks when his Iraqi captors told him to pose for the pictures that they would release to the media, worldwide.

Beside him, Sukhdev Singh, another young Indian, sobbed quietly. Tilak Raj, a father of three and at 38 nearly ten years older than the other two, was stoic. Three Kenyans and an Egyptian completed the group.

Antaryami says that the cameras reminded him of pictures that appear in the obituary columns of newspapers.

The drivers had been nabbed two hours earlier in full view of an entire town. Their massive Mercedes trucks had left Kuwait at 4 am the previous day, carrying an assortment of computers, camouflage netting and cement for the American troops. Escorted by Iraqi soldiers, they moved at a steady 100 km an hour, past a desert landscape and the occasional maize field.

At 7 pm, they halted, ate and slept in their air-conditioned trucks. They set out again at 4.30 am, a Kenyan in front, Tilak Raj behind him, followed by Antaryami, Sukhdev, the Egyptian and the other two Kenyans. Seven trucks in a line headed into the war zone.

Tilak Raj was uneasy. The milestones on the road showed they were approaching Fallujah, where fighting still raged. Before leaving Kuwait, he had asked if they were going into a war zone. He was told that the consignment was to be delivered well short of Fallujah. Now he knew that was a lie. They reached a long bridge which was the mouth to Fallujah. Past a military checkpost, the convoy leaders halted, waiting for the other trucks to cross the barrier. It was 9 am and the road was buzzing with old motorcycles and tiny cars. Then the firing started.

8216;8216;I think they were just firing in the air,8217;8217; says Sukhdev, who, in the fourth of seven vehicles, was in the middle of the convoy. 8216;8216;There must have been 30 or 40 men shouting in Arabic and waving guns. One pointed a gun at me and told me to come out.8217;8217;

Sukhdev jumped out of his left-hand drive vehicle. Antaryami was slower. A man reached in and slapped him across the face. Then he grabbed the Nokia phone that Antaryami had bought the previous month and used only two days earlier to call and tell his family that he was well. He hadn8217;t told them that he was going to Iraq. Even Antaryami8217;s father Ram Moorthy admits that his son is not a brave man. But when the armed man took his phone and wallet, Antaryami tried to snatch it back, only to be slapped again. Antaryami meekly got into the 8220;Sumo-type8221; vehicles waiting by the side of the road.

The prisoners were made to sit with their faces between their knees. After a 20-minute drive, they were herded into a sparsely furnished building. Their wallets, watches and even documents about the consignment were taken from them.

This surprised Sukhdev as the captors had already made off with his truck. Then the photo session began and Antaryami found himself weeping. Within minutes, Sukhdev joined him. 8216;8216;I told them not to call attention to themselves,8217;8217; said Tilak Raj. 8216;8216;I said we were poor people and the Iraqis would let us off as they had taken our money and trucks.8217;8217;

The Egyptian was the only captive fluent in Arabic and the Iraqis started asking him about their employers, the Kuwait and Gulf Links Transport KGL. Then it struck Tilak Raj that they might not be let off so easily. KGL, he knew, was not poor.

The hostages were taken to an empty house in an unremarkable Fallujah neighbourhood. They were made to sit in a room with no windows and no furniture though there was enough space to spread seven mattresses. The prisoners were given bread and bland, tomato soup. No one was hungry. News had just come in that KGL had denied that the seven men were its employees.

8216;8216;Now I can see this was a tactic but at that point I felt like screaming,8217;8217; says Sukhdev. Tilak Raj is a smoker and the urge to light up was becoming unbearable. But he was too scared to ask for cigarettes. No one slept that night.

At 5.30 am, the following morning, the guards started to pray. Immediately, the three Kenyans and the Egyptians joined in the namaaz. The Indians sat quietly, realising perhaps that this made them different and more vulnerable. But the guards were friendly. They called the Indians 8220;Hindi8221; and Tilak Raj gathered the courage to ask for a cigarette. Within minutes, he had a packet.

After smoking two sticks, Tilak Raj wanted to use the toilet. An armed man escorted him to the bathroom. Something caught Tilak Raj8217;s eye. 8216;8216;I saw children8217;s shoes and sandals,8217;8217; he says. 8216;8216;I thought about my own children.8217;8217;

For the first time in 24 hours, the man who had been consoling others says he 8216;8216;wanted to cry.8217;8217;

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

Part III: One night Tilak Raj will never forget

Part IV: They said jump8230;for the first time in 42 days, we saw the sun