Stefan showed me a cartoon on the Aliya in Astana site: a drawing of Zhaparov stamping a polished shoe on a bearded mullah. I recognised the style. It looked like those produced by an outfit called Infosurfing, which posted pro-Kremlin graphics on Instagram. Quotes from Zhaparov’s speeches had been put into calligraphic fonts, sometimes alongside pictures of eagles or faded-out photographs of balaclava’d special forces.

Aliya also reposted Testimony reports on Saracen malpractice. Only she beefed them up with images: a photograph of Robert Carter and CEOs in what Aliya claimed was a lapdancing club. It was set alongside a photo supposedly showing workers at one of the drill sites, malnourished Chinese and Indians squatting around a pan of rice in something resembling a shower block.

She was good: skilled at counter-argument, quick at sourcing memes, often using Western or Asian celebrities. She addressed other commentators by name, engaging in four or five debates simultaneously across various platforms: about the barbarism of traditional Kazakh customs like ‘bride kidnapping’ – in which a groom abducted his wife-to-be – about increasing use of the veil in rural communities to the south and east of the country. She debated the economic benefits of oil exploration. She originated hashtags: #KZFreedom. #StopSaracen.

I clicked #StopSaracen, got a photograph of a woman burning.

A forty-year-old woman had set herself on fire outside a Saracen compound in Shymkent. It was the second self-immolation in a week. The only footage that had surfaced showed a Kazakh police officer rushing towards her with a coat in his hands to smother the flames. The woman herself was barely visible, lying on her side next to an electronic gate, hands to her head, flames consuming her torso, which wasn’t easy to achieve and took a lot of accelerant. Apparently the woman had longstanding issues with the company over compensation for the death of her husband, a rig worker. People were debating whether it counted as terrorism, whether it was even political or just tragic, some belated sati. Others pointed out that there were no corroborating sources.

But there was an interview with her brother, weeping tearlessly on a sofa in a low-ceilinged front room. I tried to figure out what felt strange about it. Finally, I enlarged the prints on the wall behind him, then I brought up the clip of myself in the Triumph.

‘Look,’ I said to Stefan. ‘The prints on the wall behind him.’

‘What about them?’

I showed him the Triumph clip. Both rooms had the same print of a horse and rider travelling through mountains. The rider was bending down asking directions from a peasant with a staff. The path behind him meandered from the woods into a rocky landscape.

‘Even the light reflecting on the frames is identical,’ he said. ‘What’s this clip of you about?’

‘I don’t know. But someone somewhere is crafting fake videos. Maybe several people, maybe a factory of them.’