RUNNING SCARED : Kuwait City Was an Idyllic Home for Jeff Sanislo--Until Iraqi Tanks Rolled In. For the Next Four Months, His Life Was Governed by Terror and Trust.

IT WAS SCARCELY PAST DAYBREAK, BUT ALREADY THE HEAT had arrived, settling in like an irksome visitor. August in Kuwait. Not as bad as July, with its interminable sandstorms, but still oppressive. It was Thursday, a workday. Jeff Sanislo, 33, stepped from his suburban home into his Chrysler Fifth Avenue and did what he did every morning--cranked the AC. Cool air flowing, the bearded businessman then motored off, beginning the 30-minute drive he had taken for nine years. * Winding through his neighborhood of sleek-walled villas toward the highway, Sanislo flipped on his favorite FM station, the one that plays English-language music. Oddly, there was no trace of it. Locking his eyes on the road, he spun the knob right, then left, searching the dial. No luck. Must be something wrong with the radio. * Something was wrong, but it had nothing to do with his radio. * As the shimmering skyscrapers of Kuwait City came into view across the desert, Sanislo grew increasingly uneasy. Everything, it seemed, was a little bit haywire. Police cars sped past him, but their sirens were silent and their drivers wore T-shirts instead of crisp uniforms. The morning commute, normally an orderly, predictable flow of traffic, was chaotic. Motorists were pouring out of the city, screeching wildly through the streets, ignoring stoplights and blaring their horns at dawdlers. Then Sanislo passed through a major intersection. Three tanks were parked in the road nearby. Was it a Kuwaiti military exercise? Maybe so. * Tension crept along Sanislo’s neck. What the hell was going on? Grabbing the car phone, he dialed the garbage-collection company where he worked as general manager. Namal Fernando, his Sri Lankan maintenance chief, answered. * “Mister Jeff ! Mister Jeff ! It is very bad!”* Calm down, Sanislo ordered. What’s happening? * “The Iraqis have invaded Kuwait! They have bombed Dasman Palace! Seif Palace is on fire! They have stolen two of our trucks, and two drivers are missing!”* Sanislo struggled to collect his thoughts. OK, this is real. You are an American. You could be taken hostage. You should hide. Go home.

Back at his villa, he called his wife, Mary, who was spending the summer with the couple’s three young children at the family’s home near Cleveland. It took 10 minutes, but he got an outside line. Mary was asleep--it was 1 a.m. in Ohio--but was quickly roused by her husband’s news. “Get out of there,” she pleaded, growing hysterical as she viewed footage of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on CNN. “You’ve gotta get out, now!” Still uncertain what to do, Sanislo reassured his wife and then hung up, promising to call back.

Then he phoned the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City, where a staffer told him to lie low and “don’t worry--this will all be over soon.” Sanislo wasn’t so sure. He knew of the Iraqis’ historic claim to Kuwaiti territory, and he knew that Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, was tough, a proud man not likely to back down. Besides, he now heard helicopters circling overhead like vultures, their rocket launchers visible. Better get stocked up, Sanislo figured, just in case.

At the neighborhood supermarket, crowds of tense Kuwaitis hurried from meats to produce, jostling and quarreling over the last of the potatoes. When Sanislo walked in, they all paused and stared. Glancing down at his clothes, he realized his mistake. In his haste, he had left home in his suit and tie, not his dishdash , the traditional Kuwaiti white robe and headpiece he normally reserved for formal occasions. His sandy hair and Western features, yesterday a badge of honor in pro-American Kuwait, had overnight become a bull’s-eye. And everyone knew it.

Rolling his cart through the store, grabbing armfuls of chickens, frozen corn and cans of Tang, Sanislo was overcome by dread. In spite of his love for Kuwait, its culture and its language, he was still an outsider. He counted many of his Kuwaiti neighbors as friends. But how strong were the bonds? When the Iraqi troops came calling with their rifles, hunting for foreigners, would he be betrayed? And how long could he hide out?

WHEN IRAQI FORCES STORMED THE small oil kingdom of Kuwait, the blitzkrieg left tens of thousands of foreigners marooned in a lawless world of terror and brutality. Last month, the weary hostages returned home, sharing shocking stories of life as Saddam Hussein’s “guests.” In Iraq, hundreds endured four months of mind-bending horror as “human shields,” held under armed guard at strategic installations. In Kuwait, where Iraqi troops were dispatched to round up Westerners, conditions were a little better. Some hostages, holed up at luxury apartments, passed their time in relative comfort, often enjoying sumptuous meals and access to the usual amenities. Others were constantly on the run, moving from hiding place to hiding place, just a step ahead of their pursuers. These are the memories of one man, whose odyssey--more banal than some, more harrowing than others--stands as a testament to the terror of an uncertain time, of life as a pawn in the latest Mideast crisis.

On Aug. 2, Sanislo felt almost electrified, seized by “frantic disbelief” over the invasion. By the next day, the gravity of his predicament had descended on him, and he wept. It was the damn telephone that did it.

Initially, calling Ohio had taken some doing but was still possible. That first day, Sanislo got through to his wife again and also spoke with his parents. Within 24 hours, however, the international lines had been cut. He could tell by the weird busy signal. “I knew it was going to happen, that it was only a matter of time,” Sanislo recalls. Still, when it did, “there was this tremendous sense of aloneness. I was 9,000 miles away from home, but I’d been able to call my family, and that meant a lot. When that’s taken away from you, it’s like, Oh, God. There’s this real feeling of emptiness inside of you. You wonder, Will I ever talk to them again?” He was, in effect, a hostage now.

But dwelling on such thoughts, he realized, was fruitless. Instead, Sanislo perched at the window of his upstairs office, training binoculars on a major thoroughfare about 100 yards from his home. Linking Iraq with Kuwait City, the highway was alive with convoys of tanks--30 or 40 in a line--and trucks packed with Iraqi soldiers. “You could see their heads over the tops of the truck beds,” Sanislo recalls. “You could see all this artillery just rolling in.” The bumper-to-bumper parade seemed endless. With his tiny white mutt, Lulua, beside him, the cool, rational man from Ohio watched and wondered what would become of him.

During the next week, Sanislo’s life slipped into a predictable pattern. Get up at 6 or 7; shower; eat breakfast; watch videos; make a few calls to work, where his employees were hiding, hoping the whole thing would be over before they ran out of food. Life became a solitary waiting game, and aside from the occasional bouts with anxiety and tedium, Sanislo was getting along OK.

On Aug. 10, the monotony was shattered when he was awakened by a searing pain. Slicing through his abdomen, it took his breath away. And it scared him to death. What could be worse for a fugitive than the curse of illness? Oh, God, Sanislo prayed repeatedly, please don’t let my body fail me now. He tried drinking water and then lying prone on the bed. That seemed to help. But an hour later, the pain returned and intensified. His eyes filled with tears, and he doubled over, contorting his body in search of relief. Nothing worked, so he phoned a Kuwaiti friend.

Please, he gasped, I need help.

All right, we’ll be there, the friend answered. We’ll take you to a hospital.

No! No hospitals! Sanislo cried, panic rushing into his throat.

Do not worry, his companion insisted, we will have everything arranged.

Too weak to protest, Sanislo hung up and waited. Within the hour, his friend arrived, with two strangers. They were from the Kuwaiti Resistance, the burgeoning movement that had sprung up in the wake of the invasion and pledged not to relinquish the country without a fight. After clothing Sanislo in his dishdash , the men placed him in the back seat of their Chevrolet Impala. Delirious with pain, Sanislo scarcely noticed as he passed from his home and journeyed into the outside world. He leaned his head against the side window and tried just to breathe. After a short ride, the men arrived at a hospital in the suburb of Jabriya.

Iraqi soldiers patrolled the hospital’s emergency entrances. More Iraqis, wounded in skirmishes with Kuwaiti Resistance fighters, filled scores of beds inside. Sanislo was taken to a rear maintenance entrance and helped up a stairwell. On the second-floor landing, his rescuers stopped and stretched him out on the cool linoleum floor. What now? Sanislo wondered between spasms. Am I going to die here? In a stairwell?

A middle-aged Kuwaiti doctor, wearing a white coat, soon slipped through a door and bent over his patient in the dim fluorescent light. You must keep your voices hushed, he warned in near-perfect English, for there are soldiers just inside, along the corridors. The doctor pressed on Sanislo’s abdomen, inquiring about his condition. Within seconds, he announced his diagnosis: Your diet has been poor. You have salt deposits gathering on your kidneys. Sanislo had never had trouble with his kidneys before, but he wasn’t about to ask for a second opinion. The doctor disappeared, then returned with an injection and pills. “Take these,” he told Sanislo, “and if you don’t feel better in two days, call me and I will come to you.” But, by all means, the solemn-faced physician said, “do not come back here. The danger is too great.”

As he was driven from the hospital, Sanislo felt relief wash over him. He would not die, at least not yet. Then, as the pain began to ease, he reflected on his encounter. That doctor, whose name he would never learn, risked his life to save mine. Is that what they call heeding the Hippocratic oath? If an Iraqi soldier had stepped into the stairwell, perhaps for a smoke, Sanislo would have been hauled off, the occupiers’ latest prize, and the doctor most assuredly would have been shot. His debt to the Kuwaitis--and his faith in their valor--was growing.

FOR A GUY WHO GREW UP IN BRECKSVILLE, OHIO, A TIDY middle-class suburb of Cleveland, Kuwait sounded like an enchanting place--a desert kingdom, full of robed sheiks, oil money and palm trees. Sanislo had graduated from Akron University with degrees in law enforcement and business. He had worked for the Brecksville Police Department, his father’s restaurant-supply business and a local garbage company. But by 1981, he was ready for a change.

So he answered an International Herald Tribune ad he saw while on vacation and landed a job as operations manager for Al Mulla Environmental Systems, a giant trash-collection and street-cleaning firm owned by four Kuwaiti brothers. It seemed, Sanislo says, like a “good way to broaden my horizons, to see the world.” He signed a two-year contract, certain that he’d be ready to return home after that. He wasn’t; in 1983, he married his longtime sweetheart, who joined him in Kuwait. The couple stayed on, and Sanislo steadily climbed the ranks at Al Mulla.

Located on the Persian Gulf in the northeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, Kuwait captured the hearts of many expatriates, who made up nearly two-thirds of its population of 2 million. For most Westerners, the lure was a high-paying job and a lifestyle made comfortable by generous employers and the largess of the ruling al Sabah family. Foreigners were not entitled to the free education and medical services provided to natives, but they did benefit from cheap electricity and water and a standard of living far higher than most could enjoy back home. The Sanislos, for example, lived in an upscale neighborhood favored by well-to-do Kuwaitis. They rented a 5,000-square-foot home--a veritable mansion nearly five times the size of their house in Ohio. Made of gleaming beige marble, the three-story villa had five bedrooms and three refrigerators. The children attended private schools, and on Fridays, Sanislo’s only day off, the family frolicked in the gulf aboard their 20-foot speedboat.

Kuwait’s appeal extended beyond the abundance of creature comforts. Unlike many Middle Eastern cities, the capital boasted modern skyscrapers and a dazzling lineup of designer boutiques along immaculate boulevards. Bustling and cosmopolitan, Kuwait City also was unusually green for a desert metropolis that receives less than four inches of rainfall a year. Determined to create pockets of lushness, the government installed and maintained automatic sprinklers throughout the country, using partly desalinated water. Homeowners were encouraged to cultivate greenery; most houses were served by two water pipes--one for drinking water, the other for brackish water, which was supplied at no cost. The result was a harshly arid land with an incongruous bounty of gardens, grassy parks, palms and ferns.

Kuwait--a country slightly smaller than the state of New Jersey--was also a hospitable place, with modern roads and services in the most heavily populated areas. Its people are highly literate, and most members of the elite have a solid command of English, having earned advanced degrees abroad. “I went to a language institute for six months to learn Arabic,” Sanislo recalls, “but I only used it if I was pulled over by a police officer or something. All my Kuwaiti friends want to speak is English.”

To be sure, Westerners found that life in the kingdom took some getting used to. The summer heat was close to intolerable, and socializing was a challenge because of the reserved, private nature of the Islamic culture. As a result, many expatriates chose to live in Western-dominated neighborhoods and relied on embassy-sponsored parties and organizations for after-hours enjoyment.

The Sanislos, however, were different. The only other non-Kuwaiti in their suburb was the Japanese ambassador, and natives greatly outnumbered foreigners among their friends. Though many were fabulously wealthy, with houses “so big they had elevators,” Sanislo’s Kuwaiti acquaintances were “very low-key, very generous people, never acting like zillionaires.” Perhaps their most distinctive trait is “their love of children. We had so many wonderful times, just getting together at the park or at someone’s villa for lunch. They are a very family-oriented people.”

Those happy times became an important foundation, the source of the allies Sanislo would so desperately need during the closing months of 1990.

AFTER LEAVING THE HOSPITAL, SANISLO GOT SOME UNsettling news: He could not return to his villa. Someone might have seen the car, his Kuwaiti friend told him, and it was simply too dangerous to go back. For now, he would be housed in a vacant apartment building, abandoned by foreigners when troops first overran the city. Three other Americans and a Briton were hiding there. The place, his new protectors informed him, appeared to be safe.

And so it had begun, Sanislo’s life as a fugitive. Barred from his house, cut off from his family, he was now on the run. Aside from the thongs, shorts and T-shirt he wore underneath his dishdash , the business executive had nothing, not even a toothbrush or a single dinar (Kuwaiti currency). From now on, his safety--indeed his survival--was in the hands of others.

Just outside Kuwait City, the apartment building had seven stories, with two units on each floor. It was surrounded by a high concrete wall and still guarded by a private security officer. On Aug. 10, it became home for Sanislo and the others. They stayed there two weeks.

After a few days, a communal rhythm and structure developed. During the day, the men gathered in a ground-floor apartment, which served as the dining and social center. At night, they would scatter throughout the building, sleeping one or two to a unit. There was ample food; two Lebanese who were staying in the building could move freely around the city and went out for supplies, which seemed readily available despite reports of worldwide economic sanctions.

Although the men came from disparate backgrounds, they managed to get along under the circumstances. Two were in the banking business--William Van Ry, a Coloradan working as a personnel manager at a Kuwait City bank, and Ron Sargent, the Briton. Jeff Rickert of North Carolina was a finishing specialist in the furniture business. The man who became Sanislo’s closest friend was Ed Werner, an executive from a Maryland fence company who had become stranded when the tanks rolled in during a business trip.

As time passed, members of the group assumed certain roles. Sargent and Werner handled housecleaning; Van Ry took care of checking with the embassy. Sanislo was the cook and handyman--he repaired an air-conditioning fan motor, among other things--as well as “the boss,” assigning chores. “Somebody had to take the initiative, so I did,” explains Sanislo, a no-nonsense, level-headed person. “Nobody seemed to mind.”

Boredom often crowded out feelings of anxiety: “Until you’re confined like that, unable to go outside, you’ve got no idea what it’s like.” Sanislo had never been a card player, but that soon changed. For three, sometimes four hours a day, the men played “hand,” a game resembling gin rummy that the Lebanese taught them. They also read, monitored international news reports on the radio and sampled videos from the 14 apartments--”Beverly Hills Cop,” the “Dirty Harry” series, “Rocky.” It was strange, but the group favored films with a heavy dose of violence. “When I was alone (in my house) for the first six or seven days, I wouldn’t even watch a movie that had killing in it. But after I got integrated with people again, I wanted to see violence. It was like you wanted to vent your frustration or something. Forget ‘Sound of Music’--give me ‘Dirty Harry!’ Make my day!”

At night, fear--the men’s most stubborn adversary--returned. Gunfire lit up the sky, reminding the hostages of their precarious circumstances and the international crisis that had swallowed them whole. In the streets surrounding their building, Kuwaiti snipers shot at their enemies. The jittery Iraqis answered with wild sprays from their machine guns. One night a bullet came through the window of a second-floor apartment where two of the other Americans were sleeping. It lodged in the wall and left a quarter-sized hole in the tempered glass. It also set everybody on edge again.

Sanislo struggled to maintain his cheery disposition and sense of humor. But defusing tensions that developed in the group was a frequent challenge. Emotionally drained, feeling like caged rats subjected to some kind of crazy experiment, the men were sometimes overcome by a sense of helplessness; occasionally, they took it out on each other. After all, they had started out as total strangers, not friends. “You didn’t pick these people based on their personalities; you were all thrown together,” Sanislo says.

Usually, strife erupted over the question of morale. One man would become hopeful about something he heard on the BBC, then another would shower him with pessimistic predictions. A shouting match might ensue, and a third man would have to intervene and restore peace. It didn’t happen every day, Sanislo says, but “when you’re all closed in like that, you get tensions. It’s natural.”

To guard against this sort of emotional free-for-all, the group created a little democracy for making collective decisions. The world outside might be under siege, but order and civility would prevail inside their compound. “It’s just something that happened. I don’t know, we were Americans, most of us, and I guess it was sort of inbred.” A key vote came Aug. 18.

In the beginning, Sanislo had never considered attempting to flee the country. His wife had begged him to, his friends had urged him to, and he knew the early disorganization of the Iraqi Army might have allowed him to. But the businessman stood firm, refusing to flee with others across the desert to Saudi Arabia. It was a matter of loyalty. As general manager of Al Mulla, he was responsible for 160 garbage collectors and street sweepers, all of them foreigners from Third World countries such as Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. They lived in dormitories at the company’s headquarters outside of Kuwait City, and they depended entirely on their employer for food, clothing, transportation and money to send home to their families. The invasion left them lost and confused. Should they wait out the invasion? Should they head for the border?

“There was no way I could just abandon them,” explains Sanislo, who considered his employees part of his “second family.” “What if the generator went out and they lost air conditioning? They had been loyal to me, and I was responsible for them. I wasn’t going to just bail out.” In the weeks after the invasion, Sanislo was in phone contact with his workers almost daily. He learned that the two missing drivers turned up unharmed. And he relayed the combination to the company safe so that the workers could buy food. As the provisions and money dwindled, the workers were forced to leave. Driving two company buses and three vans, they made it to the Iraqi border and, ultimately, home.

On Aug. 18, a British banker and his wife--friends of Ron Sargent’s--braved daylight and drove to the apartment building with a proposition. They had been hiding out elsewhere, but they’d had enough. They had a four-wheel-drive vehicle and invited the five Westerners to join them in a dash for freedom across the desert. Sanislo’s group took a vote, and the result was 4 to 1, against. Sargent was all for going and cast his ballot accordingly. But when he saw the tally, he opted for unity and decided to stay put.

Four days later, Sargent was glad he’d reconsidered. His countrymen had made it to within nine miles of the Saudi border with another group. There, they met a barrage of Iraqi bullets. No one was injured, but the troops ordered them out of their crippled vehicle and into their companions’ car for the trip back to Kuwait City. The British couple began to transfer their Persian rugs and other valuables into the other vehicle, but the soldiers quickly put a stop to that. “No,” one said, “you go home with only your life.” The couple did not attempt to escape again.

When Sanislo learned of the episode through the Kuwaiti grapevine that connected many of the fugitives, he felt fortunate, even vindicated. His instincts had told him to remain in the building, and that had been the right choice. But, on Aug. 22, his self-confidence evaporated. Peering out an apartment window, he saw Iraqi soldiers massing directly across the street. A former Kuwaiti ministry building, it appeared, was being converted into an army communications headquarters. The group quickly assembled for a vote, and it was unanimous: The apartment building had served them well, but the time had come to move on.

BENEATH THE HELTER-SKELTER surface of occupied Kuwait, the Resistance was now operating with a surprising degree of efficiency. A large part of its mission was to harass the Iraqi invaders with persistent nighttime attacks. In the darkness, the sound of shell bursts and sniper fire filled the air; from time to time, a burning Iraqi jeep or tank supplied evidence of the movement’s scattered successes. But rebellious Kuwaitis had also established an extensive secret network to protect one another and assist foreigners. In spite of the methodical and brutal occupation--as many as 1,000 people have been reported killed and hundreds were tortured--this invisible society managed to flourish in the shadows.

The mail system, for example, was surprisingly reliable. Every few days, Resistance forces collected letters from the fugitives and trucked them to the Saudi border. Sanislo took advantage of the service but like others was cautious; he addressed his envelopes only to “Mary,” signed them “Love, Me” and limited his messages to benign news about his daily activities. He wrote 11 letters while in hiding, and his wife got all but one: “I numbered them all, and she’s missing No. 8. . . . It meant a lot to be able to write, to just get some stuff off your chest.”

Far more vital than mail privileges was the shelter provided to desperate fugitives. A series of “safe houses”--some vacated by fleeing families, others handed over by sympathetic Kuwaitis--was developed in the weeks following the invasion. It wasn’t leading them to freedom, but this became a sort of underground railroad for the grateful hostages.

Resisting the Iraqi occupiers in any way--and especially harboring a fugitive--was a crime punishable by death, often preceded by torture. Horrific stories of those who met such a fate were common. In September, a Kuwaiti man and his son were shot in the street after two British citizens were discovered in their home. Another Resistance member was drowned in his swimming pool, and Sanislo saw photographs of a grocer who was tortured after he refused to post a picture of Saddam Hussein at his market. The grocer’s fingers had been cut off, his right arm had been broken, his eyes were stuck with straight pins and his face bore cigarette burns. Given the brutality, Westerners in hiding lived in utter terror that their protectors, when confronted with the possibility of such peril, might falter or decide that helping, while noble, was too great a risk.

But, in fact, the tales of rape, slaughter, torture and other barbarities did not have a deterrent effect; rather, they seemed to fortify many Kuwaitis, strengthening their resolve. For many, the Resistance presented a chance to strike back defiantly at their conquerors, to regain some sense of control over their lives. Cognizant of basic diplomatic realities, Kuwait had supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. But the kingdom had long resented its belligerent neighbor, which continually pressed its claim to Kuwaiti territory. When the tanks appeared, such sentiments were obviously inflamed.

With Iraqi soldiers conducting searches for foreigners, no place was safe for long. Kuwaiti guardians moved Sanislo’s group every two or three days, shuttling the men from house to house. Sanislo, the smallest among the men, usually rode in the trunks of cars. Initially, he was gripped by anxiety during the 10- to 15-minute trips; if the car was stopped at a checkpoint, the trunk would undoubtedly be ordered opened and he’d be found out. But as the transportation system proved itself effective, Sanislo thought of other things: “I hope this guy’s a good driver. I hope he has a Mercedes.”

The group’s life in hiding seesawed between lavish and primitive. Sometimes, the men would be sequestered in the basements of unfinished homes, deprived of running water, cooking facilities and other comforts. There, the diet was typically bread and rice, brought in when possible by Resistance members. Other times, the men were guests in the well-stocked homes of affluent Kuwaitis who had moved out to make way for the fugitives. “It was odd,” Sanislo remembers. “At first, you felt like a stranger, a burglar. I’m sleeping in this guy’s bed. I can smell his wife’s perfume. There are pictures of his family. His wife’s bra is in the drawer. But after a while, the only concern was, Is this a safe house? “

In hopes of evading detection, Sanislo and the others took turns serving as lookout and maintained an around-the-clock watch. Taking no chances, they agreed that the sentry on duty would even eat his meals at his station. Immediately after arriving at each of their temporary homes, the men scouted out the best hiding places. Bookshelves, set at an angle across a corner of a room, provided one option. Basements were also popular, as were the air-conditioning ducts found above the ceilings of most Kuwaiti homes. Like schoolchildren practicing a lesson in earthquake preparedness, the men would hold drills, scurrying from their beds to their hiding places as fast as possible. The training gave them a sense of security.

On Nov. 6, Sanislo’s long-simmering fears reached a pinnacle. As Americans were casting ballots in voting booths across the United States, Sanislo nearly came face to face with Iraqi soldiers.

It was 2:30 a.m., and he was in a deep sleep, his belly full of chicken and potatoes. The group had been at this safe house for two days, and it was a fine one. Staying with them was Abu Majid, a gracious, intelligent man, who was one of three Kuwaiti guardians appointed by the Resistance to look after the five Westerners. Suddenly, Sanislo was awakened by Abu Majid, who was shaking his shoulder.

“The Iraqis are here!” Abu Majid whispered frantically. “Go to your hiding place!”

The Kuwaiti had been stirred by the doorbell. The group’s meticulously planned security system had overlooked one possibility; the night watchman, Ron Sargent, had been taking a bathroom break when the Iraqis approached.

Fumbling in the dark, Sanislo quickly made his bed. Disoriented, his heart pounding, he fought to concentrate: This is it. The drill’s over with. Which house is this? Where am I hiding? There was no time for hesitation. The soldiers were waiting at the door downstairs.

Sprinting to the hallway, Sanislo raced up a ladder, through an opening in the ceiling and into an air-conditioning crawl space. The pocket was two feet high and five feet long; the other hostage assigned to the spot, Ed Werner, was already there. Below them, Abu Majid quickly folded up the ladder. Then he took one final precaution--rubbing the carpet to erase any indentations.

There were four Iraqi soldiers at the door, and they were mad. It had taken the nervous Kuwaiti a good three minutes to respond to the doorbell, and they did not appreciate the wait. One stuck an AK-47 submachine gun in Abu Majid’s face and questioned him in the kitchen. The others roamed the house, looking for foreigners--and valuables. Paralyzed with fright, Sanislo and Werner listened as the soldiers climbed the stairs and searched the living room, just eight or ten feet away. What were they doing? Were they looking up at the ceiling? “We heard them talking in Arabic. ‘There’s the video player. Get the TV. Should we take this radio?’ They were on an electronics shopping spree,” Sanislo says. Another sound--a clacking noise--was more menacing. It was the soldiers’ machine guns, swinging from their shoulders.

After 20 minutes, the soldiers were finished. They piled the television, stereo and other loot in the middle of a Persian carpet, picked it up by the corners and departed in their army pickup truck. Abu Majid went to the basement, the closet and the hallway to tell his charges the coast was clear. It took some doing to convince Sanislo to come down. Were they really gone?

Shaken and drained, the group spent the rest of the night reviewing the episode. Nobody wanted to sleep. Nobody could sleep. The Iraqis, after all, might come back for more.

For Sanislo, the experience represented the most compelling evidence yet of an uplifting truth that had marked his frightening journey: The Kuwaitis, their country seized by ruthless invaders, had shoved selfish thoughts aside to serve a broader cause. A successful executive accustomed to a life of privilege, Abu Majid had jeopardized his safety to shield five foreigners he scarcely knew. The heroism, displayed at his expense, left Sanislo humbled. “We owe him our lives.”

INFORMATION--A CHERISHED AND often rare commodity for Kuwait’s fraternity of fugitives--was available to Sanislo throughout almost all of his ordeal. He had a Sony short-wave radio, which could operate on batteries if an electrical outlet wasn’t available, and several homes occupied by the group had sophisticated television antennae that picked up stations from surrounding gulf states. His friends viewed the news as a life-sustaining force. But for Sanislo, bulletins from the outside world ultimately became unbearable.

The turning point came at the last safe house, a one-story home where the five men took refuge for 18 days. It was a secure place, encircled by a high wall and sealed with a steel gate topped with spiked barbs, and it was comfortable. There were ample food, beds for everyone and three washing machines. But the weeks on the run had stretched into months, and confinement was gnawing away at the fugitives like a corrosive. Most turned to the safe house’s communications console for solace, watching for a signal that their life in hiding might soon end. Only Sanislo stayed away.

“I worked really hard at staying strong, trying not to think about things, trying to keep laughing whenever I could. The news was something I just couldn’t handle. You’d be at one house, and you’d hear some good news and you’d be all upbeat. Then you’d go someplace else, and you’d hear something downbeat and, oh, man, it could send you into tears. I’d go up and down and up and down, and that did more damage than anything. So finally, I said forget it. I didn’t listen to VOA (Voice of America), I didn’t listen to BBC, I didn’t watch TV for the last 18 days. Nothing. I just didn’t want to know.”

Sanislo’s wife, parents and brother sent 16 messages from Ohio via Voice of America. Hang in there, they urged. We love you. “The guys would say, ‘Hey, Jeff, we think we heard your wife sending a message.’ I’d say, ‘Leave me alone.’ You think I wanted to hear my wife’s voice over the radio?” It only heightened the isolation, made the distance seem farther.

On Thursday, Dec. 6, came a message Sanislo wanted to hear. It was delivered in person by a Kuwaiti Resistance fighter, and it was brief: You are going to be set free. At first, there was disbelief. But over the next few days, rumors matured into news reports, and, cautiously, the hostages began to hope. On Saturday, Dec. 8, they called the U.S. Embassy. A man named Joe picked up the phone.

Is it true? Ed Werner inquired, posing the most important question he’d ever asked.

Yes, answered Joe, we’ve got you on the first flight out of here. Do you need a ride to the airport?

No, Ed responded, we think we can make it.

Jubilation best describes the feeling that streaked through the group, Sanislo says. But even that word is inadequate: “We hugged each other, we shook hands, we gave high-fives. We danced around like crazy.”

On their final night as fugitives, the men celebrated with a gigantic supper. No need to ration any longer. There was meat loaf. Roasted chicken. Mashed potatoes with gravy. Jolly Green Giant niblets of corn. Even apple cobbler, complete with a true luxury--”Cool Whip for everyone!” Then it was off to bed, where sleep proved elusive. Sanislo logged just 45 minutes.

The next day, he rose early, showered and put on his best clothes--gray slacks, powder-blue shirt, jacket and black shoes, all retrieved earlier from his house by a Kuwaiti friend. This was it, time for his reunification with the real world. He might as well dress the part. At 7:45 a.m., two Chevrolets sent by the Kuwaiti Resistance came to carry the Westerners to the airport. The men climbed into the cars--”not into the trunk, but onto the seats, like normal people”--and set off. The drive passed in stunned silence. After 129 days in hiding, the men finally were witnessing the extent of the destruction the Iraqis had wrought.

The scars were everywhere. Block-long stretches of once-chic shops were burned, many of them stripped of their merchandise. Some buildings, the victims of shelling or bazooka blasts, bore gaping black holes, as if they’d been gored by a giant bull. The smell of thick smoke--from the fires Kuwaitis now built to burn their trash--filled the air. Once a jewel in the sand beside the glimmering gulf, Kuwait “was in shambles,” Sanislo says.

As they closed in on the airport, signs that Iraq’s invasion was a work in progress grew numerous. Huge foxholes, fortified with cement blocks, were dug alongside the highway. Some concealed tanks, their gun barrels protruding. In others, helmeted Iraqi soldiers were hunkered down, peering at the passing traffic and waiting. Seven checkpoints--those terrifying symbols of occupied Kuwait--lay between the hostages and their flight back home. They were stopped at each one.

At the first, a soldier asked where they were heading and waved them on with a salute. At the second, the same exchange occurred, but then a soldier uttered a bizarre salutation: Ciao ! The third guard also said ciao , and when the fourth one said it, their perplexed Kuwaiti driver had to ask, “Why are all of you saying ciao ?”

“I don’t know,” the soldier responded. “We were given orders this morning: When you see Americans or British, say ciao .”

For a while, the episode added a surreal, almost comic touch to Sanislo’s last hours in Kuwait. But then came the seventh and final checkpoint, the one just outside the airport. The soldier there wore the red beret of Iraq’s most elite military forces and was armed for business: machine gun, five packs of clips and a bag of hand grenades.

“Who are these people?” he asked in Arabic.

“They are Americans,” responded the Kuwaiti driver.

“They have to get down,” ordered the Iraqi.

Sanislo, sitting in front, felt his stomach tighten. The fear that had been slowly ebbing away rushed back: We made it this far, and now they’re going to take us in. He had forgotten, however, the courage of his steely nerved Kuwaiti protectors.

“Why should they get down?” the driver challenged. “Your president, Saddam Hussein, said these people could leave! Now, should I listen to him or to you?”

The soldier paused, contemplating his options. Then he stepped back and waved the cars on with a flip of his hand.

Sanislo flew to Frankfurt that afternoon and on to Andrews Air Force Base from there. His wife was waiting; it was her birthday.

BACK AT HOME IN OHIO, SANISLO IS readjusting to the frigid Cleveland weather and eating well--he lost 15 pounds during the ordeal. He’s also getting reacquainted with his children--Justin, 6, Ryan, 4, and Robby, 7 months. The older boys are full of questions, many of them concerning their family pet. A Kuwaiti friend agreed to take Lulua in. But Sanislo, keeping the story simple for now, tells his sons the dog is “guarding the house.”

Mary Sanislo lost her husband for four months, and now, with reporters, State Department officials and well-wishers stopping by, she scarcely feels as though she’s got him back. “You can’t imagine what it’s like,” she says bitterly. “People will not leave him alone.” The phone rings constantly, and flowers and fruit baskets arrive throughout the day.

One call leaves Sanislo subdued. A fellow hostage isn’t doing too well; the doctor has him on Valium, and he’s constantly depressed. Sanislo’s eyes dart out the window at each passing vehicle, but he seems calm and says he feels fine. He wonders, sadly, about his Kuwaiti friends, about their country “all shot to hell.” The Iraqis bombed the public buildings, all the national landmarks. “It’s terrible,” he says quietly, “like someone coming by and bombing the Statue of Liberty.” Sanislo is savoring his freedom, his family and “the little things about day-to-day life” that had been missing for so long. Walking outside when you want to, for instance, or driving down the street without worrying about who’s around the next bend.

After a month’s rest, he figures he’ll look for work, something to pay the bills. But already, he thinks about returning to Kuwait. “Our life was there, and just about everything we own is there. I stand to lose a lot. But we have our lives and our health, and that’s all that’s important now. That’s all that’s important, period. If I get it back, I get it back. It’s just material things.”

There’s another thing that might draw Sanislo back to Kuwait, once “everything is over and done with,” once Saddam Hussein and his “brutal regime” have been toppled.

He’d like to say some proper thank-yous.