After more than 2 months of wait­ing I was gran­ted the regime per­mis­sion to come to Syria for two weeks in Septem­ber 2014 and was able to visit Dam­as­cus, Homs, Maaloula and Krak de Che­va­liers. From the very first day I couldn’t escape the sur­real feel­ing of being inside John Steinbeck’s 1948 A Rus­sian Journal pro­duced in col­lab­or­a­tion with Robert Capa. A minder, a feel­ing of loneli­ness inside a lux­uri­ous hotel, ruins of Homs instead of ruins of Stal­in­grad – there were just too many coin­cid­ences. I pho­to­graphed days and nights, know­ing what a rare chance I got and also kept a diary which I used as a basis for this short story.