SINISTER SILENCE OF A CITY BESIEGED

James Harkin is one of the few non-Syrians to get into Homs, the epicentre of the Syrian uprising, and has witnessed the terror and the violence of the military lockdown

IT IS an abrupt twist to a conversation as I settle into my seat on the bus from Damascus to Homs: an 18-year-old man tells me in no uncertain terms to get off, to leave the bus.

We’ve known each other just five minutes, Mohammed and I, after he introduced himself while we were loading our luggage into the hold of the bus. I’d invited him to sit beside me at the back. With his shock of curly black hair zipped up in the hood of a stripy cardigan, he looked like the lead singer of a retro boy band.