You gaze at the sky through your camera lens, while I can just make out in the darkness in front of me the ruined wall of a building, and I think of Fred, a fireman who turned up in Sarajevo during the war. He carried out various humanitarian tasks, he was useful, he used to leave the city, travel back to America, and keep coming back to our besieged city. After Sarajevo, in 1995, he went to Chechnya, and all trace of him was lost. He vanished. And in the eighties, somewhere in Latin America, he had fallen asleep, weary, in a hotel. In the morning he woke, looked out the window, and saw destroyed buildings as far as the eye could see. He opened his door and realized that he was on the edge of an abyss, because the corridor and stairs had collapsed. He had slept through an earthquake that had turned the whole town into a ruin. It had vanished.

From our hotel room I see airport lights, planes like fireflies take off and land.

“What airport is that?” I ask.

“Military! Beyond the runway is Area 51.”