In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [37]
“Yes,” I said.
I worked until early evening and then walked over to the British ambassador’s residence in Mezze for the Queen’s annual birthday celebration. The ambassador’s garden was full of Syrian businessmen, almost all of whom were at least fifty pounds overweight. Their wives, covered in jewels to compensate for their fading beauty, stood by their sides. Waiters in black tuxedoes offered guests rich hors d’oeuvres and big crystal glasses brimming with stiff drinks.
Excited by the prospect of going to China with President Assad, and after drinking half a dozen glasses of red wine, I felt optimistic for the first time in months. I chatted with businessmen about US sanctions; I expressed my beliefs that they wouldn’t have any effect on the country and that Washington would be better off engaging Syria rather than confronting it.
That night the wine caught up with me, with a sharp pain in my stomach that jolted me out of bed. All the anxieties of my existence in Syria filled my head. Why was the first lady inviting me to China via Rola? Didn’t I just diplomatically get Rola in trouble? Why, despite calling the first lady’s attention to the irregularities at her NGO, had I still received no contact from her? Last but not least, I worried that I might now be too sick to take such a long flight.
The next thing I knew, I awoke and found myself lying on my back in the hallway leading to my bedroom. The pain in my stomach was gone, and I felt totally at peace with myself. The next morning, when I told Rola what had happened, she took me aside and said, almost in a motherly tone, “This is normal. It’s just the stress of being around the Syrian regime. You’ll be fine.”
One week later I was in Beijing, the first non-Arab foreign correspondent and American to ever travel with a Syrian president on a state visit. Bashar had yet to outline a reform vision for Syria, so a visit to China indicated that the young president would adopt the “China model”—that is, no political reform with comprehensive economic reform. From my hotel room in the Chinese capital, I saw hundreds of construction cranes dotting the city’s skyline. Outside, orderly street markets teemed with shoppers sifting through everything from lingerie to MP3 players. As I waded through the market with the members of the Syrian press corps, we all talked about how Syrians and Chinese shared a love for trade. We speculated that Syria could be like this someday soon. All that was needed was some reform.
The following morning, we were herded onto a small bus that would take us to the day’s first photo opportunity, the first couple’s visit to a section of the Great Wall of China located about an hour outside Beijing. The bus had difficulty keeping up with the fleet of black Audis that made up the official motorcade as the gradient increased the closer we got to the wall. When we finally arrived and saw the president and first lady standing alone atop the ramparts, we hurried out of the bus and up the wall’s stairs; standing at the top of the steps and looking down on us were Bashar, Asma, and foreign minister Farouk al-Shara.
As we snapped photos of the lanky six-foot-four Syrian president, it was easy to understand why so many Syrians liked him. His father, Hafez, seldom ventured out in public, preferring to speak through the state-owned newspapers from the confines of the presidential palace overlooking Damascus. Direct contact with a Syrian president was therefore something new, though Syrians’ reactions to Bashar’s new open ways were clumsy. When Bashar began making state visits in 2001, for example, members of the Syrian press corps didn’t know how to react. Because the country had been isolated for so long, they weren’t exposed to international norms regarding the handling of VIPs. This led to embarrassing moments. During the photo shoot of Bashar’s first state visit to Spain in 2003, members of the Syrian press corps repeatedly shouted out to the Syrian president and