4 September 2018, Tuesday
“Hi Ahmed: how are you?”
“Hello my friend, it’s going well, but we know that something terrible is going to happen. We are worried because we cannot go anywhere. We feel that we have no control whatsoever. We hear that the Russians, the Turks, the Americans and the Iranians are now deliberating on what is going to happen to us. We have no other option than to continue. Yesterday we did a theater performance in Quraiteen, a village nearby. The shows are very successful, but still, it’s a strange feeling to ‘just’ go on. We’re even working on a new play. I hope we will be able to perform it. The show must go on.”
“It seems nobody knows what’s going on here — we don’t even know it ourselves. The soldiers at the Turkish army posts tell us that we shouldn’t worry. But we don’t know if we can trust them on this, because this morning there have been bombings again at Jisr al-Shugur. Do you know what the Turks are going to do?”
“Will you call me again this week?”