It gets cold and lonely out in the steppe at night but a shepherd has his flock to keep himself company.

I was on a road trip with some ICARDA scientists to check out a project in Al Qamishli in the far northeast of the country. It had been a long drive and we were drawing near to our destination and eager to get stuck into some arak and kebab.

But the light of the setting sun was perfect just as we passed a farmer stacking barley straw. I yelled ‘stop the car’ and ran out to get a shot in the remaining light.

Within a couple of minutes a shepherd approached us to see what was going in. [In Syria, no matter where you stopped in rural areas within a few minutes a shepherd would appear from nowhere eager to have some company.]

This shepherd saw me shooting away and was a bit of a larrikin. He said, why not shoot a picture of me? I played along with him and said because he wasn’t photogenic. So he grabbed the nearest sheep and gave it a big hug and said ‘how about now?’ CLICK. I got my photo.