Tawu, 2004

In the centre of town every house had been demolished, and on the ruins sat strange people, tramps and traders selling things that already lay around in abundance underfoot as rubbish. The only three-storey building among them was the Hotel Shambhala. It was colder inside than outside. Two girls made us fill in long forms; they appeared and vanished like ghosts. At night the hotel came alive: rats behind the wall, the draught hissing in the cracks, and the feeling that someone else was there.