Excerpt from A Disappearance in Damascus by Deborah Campbell, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"What about cars and automatic weapons?" I asked.

Evidently the militias were okay with that.

He said his dad used to be an official in Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, so the militias wanted his life. "But they don't need a reason. They kill anyone."

Behind him quavered an old woman who had pulled her scarf across her face, not out of modesty, but for fear of being recognized. A month earlier, unknown militiamen had killed two of her sons and three brothers-in-law. Her husband had been driven mad with grief. I wanted to assure her that they could not get to her now. But that was unclear—I was hearing stories of militants who followed their targets across the border and killed them in Syria.

At the far side of the immigration building, a man was pacing agitatedly outside the barred window of a jail cell. Back and forth, back and forth. He looked inside the bars, said a few words, passed through bits of food, and paced. On the other side was his wife, caught trying to cross into Syria on fake documents. Real passports could of course be bought too, but at twice the cost. A man who arranged such things told me that for a thousand US dollars he could get me an authentic Iraqi passport in three days, and no, it was not a problem that I could not pass for an Arab among the blind.

In the lineup snaking out of the immigration building into the dust-choked yard stood three burly middle-aged men, engaged in the endless task of jostling for a patch of shade beneath the lone tree. Engineers from Iraq's state oil company, they told me their lives had been threatened. All of the oil workers, they said, were being kidnapped or killed. It was part of the battle for control of the country's most valuable resource; this, they and many observers believed, was the real reason for the war. "Not Saddam," one of them said. "Twenty-five years ago, Donald Rumsfeld was shaking his hand." That was when the two nations were allies against Iran, and Rumsfeld was Ronald Reagan's friendly emissary to the Iraqi dictator.

Grizzled and weary-looking, the engineer had to check off one of three reasons for entering Syria—business, tourism, or "other." He claimed to be a tourist. "I'm here to take a holiday," he explained, "from the sound of rockets, bombings and explosions."

His colleague interjected. "The Iraqi people are romantics. We like poets, songs, nature, and nowadays we hear nothing but explosions and bombings."

I too had come to Syria on a standard-issue tourist visa. It's what I usually do when reporting from places where journalists are viewed with suspicion. To request an official journalist's visa is to advertise your intentions to those whose job it is to get in your way. In the old days they would have to follow you around, but now they can watch your computer and listen to your phone. They can restrict your movements, decide where you can go, whom you can talk to, how long you can stay, and make trouble for whoever talks to you. Over the past seven years of international reporting I'd learned that the wisest course is to keep your head down and ask permission from no one. That way no one knows what you're up to, and they aren't obliged to think up ways to stop it.

In the letter accompanying my visa application I explained that I was a professor who had studied classical Arabic and wished to see what remarkable sights Syria had to show me. This wasn't a lie. I teach at a university, had studied if never mastered Arabic, and Damascus was a place I'd always wanted to see.

To everyone I met, unless I was interviewing them, I was just a tourist here. To the idle curious; to the sultry neighbour in the apartment below mine, on her second marriage, who told me her life story over tea; to the talented family of artists I befriended after stumbling upon their craggy studio built into the ancient city walls; to the taxi drivers shooting the breeze (or gathering information, maybe)—to all of them I was simply a professor on holiday. I was just interested in art or archaeology or architecture or history or Sufi poetry. Which indeed I was.

Excerpted from A Disappearance in Damascus by Deborah Campbell. Copyright © 2017 by Deborah Campbell. Excerpted by permission of Picador. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.