In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [6]
After the war, Leila and her family expected that, given the regime’s strong position and good terms with the West, Assad would release political prisoners and launch sweeping reforms to overhaul the country’s moribund public sector. In the end, economic reform was limited to a single law for foreign investment. The prisoners who emerged from jail were mostly communists and Arab nationalists, which left thousands of others associated with the Muslim Brotherhood “disappeared.” And while I didn’t fully realize it then, it was the specter of those who never emerged from Syria’s prisons that kept Leila’s—and every other Syrian’s—voice to a whisper when they spoke about the Assad family.
After lunch, Leila took me for a tour of Abou Roumaneh. The architecture of the district’s buildings looked like certain quarters of Cairo—a city I had grown tired of. When I had arrived in Egypt to study political science at the American University in Cairo in 1994, I thought that if I just learned Arabic, life in Cairo would be easy. Boy, was I wrong. With better Arabic came better comprehension of the growing number of personal questions from Cairenes I didn’t know. Often they asked why I hadn’t converted to Islam. It would also be nothing for a taxi driver taking me and a female colleague somewhere to ask if we were married. An increasing number of Egyptians just simply seemed to jeer at Westerners as we walked down the street. While it was hard to point to any one reason for Egyptians’ slow shift toward this kind of conservative, in-your-face interpretation of Islam, it coincided with the return home of thousands of Egyptians who had traveled to Saudi Arabia as guest workers in the 1980s. Egyptians told me that many of their countrymen brought Saudi Arabia’s less-tolerant interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, back home and were now disseminating it around the country.
Walking down a street in Abou Roumaneh was a completely different experience. No one asked about my relationship with Leila, who, despite her risqué dress, garnered only glances from passers-by. Shopkeepers were friendly and asked no questions about our religion. People just minded their own business. Car traffic was far less than Cairo, where the air constantly smelled of exhaust fumes. In American terms, it was more like walking down a street in Pittsburgh than New York.
We decided to take a breather in a nearby café. As we sipped on strong cups of Arabic coffee scented with cardamom, Leila asked me about OBG’s project in Syria. When I finished explaining all that was involved, she asked me if we had all the proper government permissions. I told her that we had all the paperwork in hand, as well as the backing of the Ministry of Economy and Trade.
“What about the American government?” she asked.
I laughed and told her we didn’t need clearance from Washington to work in Syria—journalism was exempt from US sanctions on the country.
“Oh yeah?” Leila said, putting her hand on my shoulder and giving me a big smile. “Remember, Andrew, everything about Syria is political. Go and see your embassy and tell them what you are up to.”
I called the economic and commercial section of the US embassy in Damascus the next morning. The secretary immediately patched me through to Mary Brett Rogers, an American diplomat whom I had met the previous week. To my surprise, she set an appointment to see me that afternoon. US embassies officially represent American interests abroad, but they are still an arm of the federal government’s bureaucracy. A recent request to see an officer at the US embassy in Cairo had taken about two weeks to set up, due to the need to obtain security clearances and fit the appointment around diplomats’ extensive vacation time.
The US embassy in Damascus sits atop Rouda Circle, the center of the Syrian capital’s top residential district. The Tora River—one of seven small tributaries that trickle