I don’t mean the people depicted in stone in the British Museum, with angular beards riding chariots surrounded by lions – although there is an interesting scholarly debate about whether these are their direct descendants – but the few thousand Christians scattered among a few dozen villages in the hills of Tur Abdin in south east Turkey, a stone’s throw from the Syrian border.

According to the UN Global Crisis Response Group, most capitalist states have already rolled back the relief funds they provided during the pandemic. ‘If social protection systems and safety nets are not adequately extended’, the report states, ‘poor families in developing countries facing hunger may reduce health-related spending; children who temporarily left school due to COVID-19 may now be permanently out of the education system; or smallholder or micro-entrepreneurs may close shop due to higher energy bills’.