244 AMERICAN SPYwith thousands of other pilgrims and tourists, I then wandered through the
bustling al-Hamidiyah Souk, the largest and oldest in Syria. Gazing up at
the souk’s blocks-long black iron ceiling, shot full of holes by French war-
planes in 1925, was like looking up at a night sky filled with twinkling stars.
Sunlight poked through the holes punctured in the roof. During a day trip
to the ancient city of Bosra in southern Syria, Tarek, Ali Baba, and I took
a horse-drawn buggy tour of the town’s ancient Roman ruins, including a
Roman theater that still hosts concerts. (It would have been romantic but
for the presence of Tarek and Ali Baba.) Accustomed to having to contend
with hordes of visitors to the Colosseum in Rome, I found it was a nice
change of pace to encounter almost no other tourists taking in the historic
sites in Bosra. Unlike Damascus, there is not much in the way of shopping
in Bosra, but it is possible to find some genuine Syrian handicrafts. Oil
paintings of typical Syrian scenes I purchased from a local Bosra artist now
adorn my office wall.
During one crazy half-hour ride from downtown Damascus to the inter-
national airport southeast of the city, my taxi was involved in not one but two
separate fender benders. The first occurred when my driver cut someone off,
and we were rear-ended by another taxi. The drivers cursed and gestured
furiously at each other, but neither stopped nor got out to assess the damage.
The second accident occurred about three minutes later when someone cut
us off, and we rear-ended them. Again, neither car stopped, and my driver
delivered me, slightly shaken but on time, for my flight to London. Before
my flight departed, I purchased a Hassan Nasrallah key fob in the airport
souvenir shop, in silent tribute to the fact that I had avoided capture by Hez-
bollah in the Beqaa Valley one week earlier. Nasrallah is the popular bearded
leader of Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
Unfortunately, Syria is no longer a safe destination for intrepid trav-
elers. Assad chose to mercilessly destroy his own country rather than relin-
quish power. It’s more complicated than that, but explaining all facets of
the Syrian war is beyond the scope of this book. The war has killed hun-
dreds of thousands of innocent people, pushed nearly six million Syrian
refugees out of their country, and displaced millions more, most of whom
are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.^1