Damascus is hunkered down in war, blighted by shellfire, blitzed by warplanes and regularly shredded by car bombs. It is also a thriving capital, where parties go on, restaurants are lavish and civilians still put on work suits and carry briefcases to the office.
The sounds of heavy fighting that were once so terrifying - and many thought, the beginning of the end for President Bashar al-Assad's reign - have become a backdrop to everyday life. The national army's tanks have been firing relentlessly for months. Rockets and missiles fired from the military stronghold of Qasioun Mountain have long flown over the heads of residents in central Damascus before crashing into rebel-held districts, sending up plumes of smoke. Planes continue to fly overhead, carrying out bombing runs day and night.
But as the war has come closer, it has not led to a collapse in Assad's support base, as many expected. It has strengthened the laager around his rule, drawing his constituents in Damascus' elite and nouveau-rich classes together through a shared fear of what could come next.
Cafes are abuzz with customers swapping stories of the latest rebel atrocity, some real, some invented. Most express fear at the Islamist hue of the opposition, including the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra that has claimed responsibility for many of the car bombs that rock the capital.
Many Damascenes said that at the beginning of the uprising in 2011 they had been against the Syrian Government. Tired of its authoritarian rule, some had joined protests. But the war has gone beyond the narrative of a popular uprising against a dictator; a rebel takeover would lead to less, not more freedom, they said.
"Those people want to take us back centuries," said one mother of two children. "My daughter won't be able to go to school. I will have to cover my head in a black veil. I don't like this Government, but does the West really think that this opposition would be any better?"
In the old Christian quarter of Bab Touma last Sunday residents made their way to church under the rattle of gunfire from a front line a kilometre away in Jobar district.
Mortar shells fired by rebel groups regularly fall on these narrow cobbled alleyways. But market stalls and shops remain stubbornly open. Two female art students, both in their early 20s, walked casually down the street chatting and carrying wooden easels that displayed their half-finished paintings.
"We walk to university now because it is faster than trying to drive through the checkpoints," said one. "Apart from that life is okay. At night-time we drink in bars with friends. The shelling wakes us up sometimes when it is particularly loud, but we are mostly used to it now".
Disappearances, kidnappings and assassinations are a new reality in the city, and locals fear that anyone known to support Assad, or with relations in the Government, is a potential target. "The protests initially came from anger that people couldn't speak out against the Government without risking arrest or torture," said Heba Qassim, a Sunni resident from Jobar. "Now those same people are killing anyone who speaks for the Government."
The threats have the opposite effect to that intended. They mean all the residents of Damascus know of the rebels is that they bomb and kill.
The Syrian regime has managed to capitalise on the fear and galvanise support by inspiring nationalist fervour against "the terrorists", the term it uses for rebel groups and which many locals also now use.
Bomb blast walls, erected around all public buildings, are painted in the Syrian flag. At a checkpoint, beneath a poster of the President with a kindly but firm expression on his face, are painted in golden letters the words: "From the womb of agony, hope should be born. From the bottom of despair we create the best solutions".
Placards that once advertised commercial products now proudly display images of a soldier bending to receive a flower from a little girl, or helping a wounded civilian to cross a street. It may be crude, but for some it seems to work. "This is not about saving Bashar al-Assad," said Tamer Yezig, who has set up a rights watch group to monitor rebel atrocities. "This is about saving Syria."
Assad is relying on this sentiment, this bedrock support, as he prepares to address a new attempt by the West to force a peace settlement on him, one that its leaders say must include a "political transition". If Damascus does not turn against the regime, it is hard to see how the war will end any time soon.
The statistics of this agony are stark. Adam Abdelmoula, the UN Resident Co-ordinator in Damascus, said as many as 6.25 million Syrians are now affected by the conflict. Approximately 4.5 million of those are internally displaced.
Back at the Damas Rose, the morning after the party, men and women lay tanning on sun loungers.
Looking on was a stylish 32-year-old woman named Ghazal, who decided a year ago to give up her job as a UN bureaucrat to become a party planner, and appears to have made it a roaring, wartime success. "We have to still live our lives because this could go on for a long time. I still go out and meet friends in shisha cafes. I used to be shocked at how Lebanese people lived under the bombs for decades during their civil war. Now I understand."
