By GREG DIXON
It is simple and symbolic and it hangs unobtrusively in a corner of Henry and Daphne Halkyard's spacious, homely living room.
Behind glass, and inside a plain frame, a frightened horse rears high in the surf while its Arab master tries to tame it.
The painter lived briefly near the Halkyards' 5ha property in rural Matakana, north of Auckland. But the picture is a copy, from a photograph quickly snapped.
The original once hung - may still hang - in a Kuwait City hotel where the Halkyards were held captive by Iraqi soldiers just months before the 1991 Gulf War.
"That," says Mrs Halkyard, with not a little bitter irony about a picture she loves, "is what we might call our sole souvenir of our summer in Iraq."
It will be 10 years ago on Wednesday that the Halkyards and their 365 fellow passengers on a British Airways flight bound for Kuala Lumpur found themselves pawns in a dangerous game of brinkmanship as Iraq invaded Kuwait and moved swiftly towards war with the West.
With scores of others, the Halkyards became part of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's "human shield" - hostages held near strategic military installations in a cruel plan to deter attack.
These human shields would spend 84 days in fear of their lives. At home, the Halkyards' four sons and daughters - and the whole country - shared their fear.
"It was as if we had disappeared," Mrs Halkyard says. "We were surrounded by this 3m-high fence for all those weeks. You never even saw a horizon, just a cloudless sky and a few twigs of eucalyptus. It was a very intense form of isolation."
This summer in hell began on August 2, 1990, after the couple boarded BA149 in London for Kuala Lumpur.
The naturalised New Zealanders had returned to their native England on British passports to care for Mrs Halkyard's mother. The return home was to be via Malaysia, where they intended visiting a couple they had meet years before walking the Hollyford Track.
There were to be two stopovers - Madras in India, but before that Kuwait.
With many other passengers on BA149, the Halkyards had heard news reports of Iraqi troops massing on the borders of Kuwait. Small wonder all on board were uneasy, and a two-hour delay at Heathrow, apparently for repairs to the aircraft's air-conditioning motor, did nothing to quell their fears.
"Nobody was very happy when they discovered the plane was stopping in Kuwait. I don't think it was even on our tickets," Mrs Halkyard says.
Her husband takes up the story: "We touched down about 2 am, and everything was all right. It was a horrible hour of the morning, but it was only going to be a short stop so we stayed on board while they refuelled and the cleaners came on."
Less than half an hour later, their world had turned upside down.
Indeed, Iraqi troops were already pouring into Kuwait as BA149 touched down at Kuwait City airport, half an hour's drive from the border.
Questions still remain about why the plane was not diverted away from the new war zone.
"They had just finished refuelling, the cleaners had finished too, and I think they had just started to board again when these low-flying jets came over and rocketed the airfield," Mr Halkyard says.
"You're in this metal cylinder and you don't know what's going on. Of course a jet fully laden with fuel and all the rest is not the best place to be in an attack. The captain cut the power straight away and said, 'Get off immediately."'
Grabbing their hand luggage, the Halkyards bolted for the terminal and were then forced into buses at gunpoint, along with the other passengers and crew, and taken to the Kuwait Airport Hotel. They were prisoners.
"There were some passengers who did not realise it and they were, well, very forceful to the captain and crew and they rather expected the captain to more or less say, 'Follow me boys, let's board the plane, press the starter button and disappear into the night' - a bit like Biggles. But it wasn't on; we realised that, and most people did.
"I think some thought the captain was being a bit weak. But the captain knew very well that we were in dire strife and we had to behave ourselves."
As the West put pressure on Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait and release the hostages, the Halkyards and other captives were moved by bus and train to Baghdad and finally 35km north of the Iraqi capital to a place called Tarmiyah.
They became part of the human shield around a large plant for enriching uranium, a key site in Iraq's nuclear weapons programme.
They, with 12 to 30 others (the membership would change constantly), would spend the next 2 1/2 months in a rat-infested tin shed they dubbed the Tin Tabernacle, surrounded by a corrugated-iron fence.
Theirs would be a diet of bad food, little humour and continuous fear.
At home, a worried family and nation did what they could for the Halkyards and a handful of other New Zealanders caught in the crisis.
But as the days dragged out to months, hope seemed a hopeless thing and husband and wife found themselves dealing with the appalling situation and surroundings in different ways.
Though they would both walk for kilometres around the compound morning and evening, during the high-40s heat of the day Mrs Halkyard found it better to read than take part in endless, desperate dwelling on the future.
Their daughter's 20th birthday was a really bad day.
But it seems likely that - after the Iraqis decided to let women and children leave - Mrs Halkyard's decision to stay on with her husband was the lowest point.
The choice between love for her husband and love for their children was the hardest she has ever made.
Hope finally arrived in the form of former British Prime Minister Edward Heath. His negotiations with Hussein led to the release of the first hostages.
The Halkyards were among 31 freed on October 31 - Mr Halkyard's earlier brush with cancer had saved their lives. "It's was the only time in life when being sick and old could be considered anything of an advantage," Mrs Halkyard says.
She was 57 then, he 61. But 10 years on, they say the experience has emphasised that freedom of choice is something that should be enjoyed.
"We've not had any hesitation in enjoying the good things in life since," Mrs Halkyard laughs.
As for the Gulf War, which began in the January after their ordeal, she feels that the conflict was preordained and it was "just a horror story."
Indeed, while the Halkyards have no time for Hussein, they say they hold no grudge against "ordinary" Iraqis, particularly their kinder captors. Iraq, they believe, is a captive of its history, its disparate populations and its role as a buffer for Western oil interests.
What they are no wiser about is why they and the other passengers on BA149 found themselves hostages.
Despite repeated requests, they have never received a satisfactory explanation from British Airways or the British Government about how the aircraft came to land in a city under invasion.
Nor have they received an apology.
But they now believe, in the wake of an investigation by television's Assignment programme three years ago, that the aircraft was delayed to allow British intelligence to deliver agents into Kuwait.
"All us would like to know the truth, but there has been a conspiracy of silence," Mr Halkyard says. "But ultimately it will be known."
There has been little compensation, either. While they fantasised, during their captivity, about a huge payout, neither the British Government nor British Airways has offered the Halkyards money.
The House of Lords rejected British compensation claims - though some American and French passengers have won six-figure, out-of-court settlements from the airline.
Finally last year, nine years after the horrific events of 1990, the Halkyards were given $2500 each from a special UN Gulf War fund.
"We've got our lives, we feel so fortunate for that," Mrs Halkyard says.
"But we do feel indignant that there was this discrimination and some got generous compensation and the rest were left to make their own way."
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