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As Asma al-Assad walked into the NGO that Saturday, the SEBC’s staff, dressed in their best attire, greeted her at the door. Standing behind the staff were representatives of the European Commission, which sponsored the SEBC, as well as the ambassadors and their wives from Greece, the Netherlands, and a few other countries. In the days leading up to the opening, Rola had given the European representatives guided tours of the incubator, after which their countries were thanked on the NGO’s website for their “support” of MAWRED.

After a brief collective hello, Rola then guided the first lady around the incubator and introduced her to its projects, which, like Syria Today, she had already approved. As Mrs. Assad walked into Ammar’s office in her turquoise silk dress, only the sound of rustling clothing could be heard as staff members scrambled to open doors for her or get out of the way. This was the first time I had seen Mrs. Assad since my interview and the first time she had been seen in public since the birth of her second child, Zein.

Mrs. Assad shook hands and rubbed shoulders with the European diplomats and representatives for about half an hour before waving a friendly good-bye and heading gracefully out of the front door. There was an air of excitement in the room, which frequently happens in the Arab world where the people seldom see their leaders. It wasn’t just that she was the wife of the leader of Syria—she was the only remaining hope for her husband’s reform promises. For me and the European diplomats, Asma al-Assad was also a comprehensible and reasonable individual in an opaque regime.

I went upstairs to find Rola, who was sitting on a chair in her office surrounded by a handful of SEBC senior staff. She was writing down figures frantically on pieces of paper and handing them over to one of her colleagues, who was sitting at her computer terminal. The staff quietly watched in awe as Rola provided estimates for the NGO on everything from electricity to seed capital for small businesses. She put down her pen and looked me in the eye. “Next year is going to be a good year, Andrew,” Rola said, a sly smile on her face.

I stopped by Rola’s office a few days later to say hello. The confident person of MAWRED’s opening now sat slumped over her desk, leafing through the pages of her passport. Her fingers were cocked back like the hammer on a revolver.

“I need to go to Switzerland for treatment,” she said. “I suffer from a rare disease that will eventually kill me.”

I was shocked. I had noticed that she had certain minor physical limitations, but I had not thought that they were due to an underlying disease.

“I’ll be back in a few weeks,” she said. “Keep working on the magazine.”

When I arrived back in Syria after the Christmas break, I talked with all the writers about their progress on the articles and the approaching midmonth deadline. Amr told me that he was still working on his assignments but didn’t discuss his progress in detail. Ammar simply said he had done nothing on his article at all. “Every time I sit down to write, I just start attacking the regime,” he said. I reminded him that if he did a bit of research and conducted some interviews, he should have lots of raw material for an article. “I can’t write it, but I know someone who can,” he said. “He’s written on this before.”

The lack of activity by the Syrian writers filled me with a sense of dread. It wasn’t fear of the authorities—I was confident of our political cover—or worry about the magazine’s design and concept, which had already been finalized through a Dutch friend and former colleague in Istanbul. It was the sense that the Syrians were making no progress—even energetic Leila, my business partner and guide to Syria, seemed to be doing little on marketing and other research. I was confident that I could put together a magazine and edit it, but how could I do anything if I had no raw material to work with? And how could it turn into a viable venture if we had no idea