At Christmas, choosing to buy and consume less can feel like a challenge in the face of big-budget marketing campaigns, the pressure to share gifts and the perfectly placed extravagant home decor shared online.

He smiled, and I noticed how his teeth were perfectly square bar his canines, gleaming in a way that made me self-conscious.

Dressed in denim and a monogrammed windbreaker, cradling a cup of coffee, he was casual and unassuming, perfectly attired for fact-finding on a late fall morning.

In Aleppo in around 2015 an Alawite general handed out glasses of perfectly distilled arak, poured from bottles that once held Jack Daniels.

“That’s now perfectly clear. ... He wants to send a message out there: ‘Don’t cross me.’