Janine di Giovanni can still remember the parties. When she first arrived in Damascus, Syria, in May 2012, the raucous – “bacchanalian”, she recalls – celebrations were legendary. They raged on at her hotel every Thursday, with the Syrian elite congregating around the terrace to smoke shisha and drink beer. On the weekend, the same group would go to the opera or enjoy decadent, delicacy laden banquets in the Old City. All this, she remembers, while people were starving in nearby Homs, and bombs were raining down on rebeloccupied neighbourhoods. “There was such a sense of denial,” recalls di Giovanni.
Then, suddenly, full-scale war happened. “War starts very quickly,” she muses. “There’s a song of fascism, and it’s becoming louder and louder. But some people don’t want to hear it.”…