There will be no Syria for me. Or visitation with my sweeeeet Caroline, a friend from the good old summer days of Cairo '05. I went to Lebanon with the hopes of spending my January vacation in with Caroline at her new digs in Damascus. The plan was to obtain my Syrian visa at the border with Lebanon. I could have obtained the visa in Cairo, but this past fall the wait time jumped from 2 days to 2-4 weeks for Americans. The embassy said I could get that visa at the border, so I decided to go at the last minute. Here's what happened: after a very nice, 45 minute flight to Beirut, after befriending a very nice woman whose family picked her up from the airport and insisted on giving me a ride from the airport to the bus station, after the woman and her husband graciously negotiated a legitimate service taxi to the border, after rain and fog and dropping temperatures as I climbed the mountain to Syria in an old Dodge with 4 strangers, after falling palms first in a large puddle in the cold rain soaking both shoes and jeans and jamming/scraping thumb on right hand, after 5 hours, cold and semi-wet (until I was told about the Duty Free Shopping Mall and Dunkin Donuts--best coffee I've ever had!) at the border with thorny border agents on the Syrian side but extremely nice and good looking, more professional on the Lebaneses side, and after many "Ohh! But maybe, oK?!" phone calls between Carrie and I on other people's mobile phones, I was denied a visa and returned to Beirut in a service taxi (a warm Mercedes!) of an old man who was fine on all accounts except for when he tried to sell me on his friend's hotel instead of the (very budget) hostel where I had made reservations. I seem to travel as though it were an assignment--this one: How not to go to Syria.

My time in Lebanon turned out well, aside from all the obstacles, as I mentioned my thoughts about it in a previous post. I met fellow travelers at the hostel with whom I took day trips and explored a bit. It is a beautiful, scenic country with, as most Middle Eastern countries, an extraordinary history. I was much intrigued by our guided tour of the southern region of the country, into the mountains and up the hills, visiting sites of the early 1980s war which have been memorialized by locals and international organizations.

Of all the news reports and stunning visuals about people burning embassies and demonstrating with rage, I must take into consideration all those I met each day, going about their daily business. From this I am constantly reminded that a person is not a government or a religion. For example, while in Luxor, in Upper Egypt, we took a local microbus, a Toyota type minivan with bench seats covered in ragrugs, the sliding door open, people jumping in and out from the street. When it emptied out a bit, the driver asked, "American?" Yes, of course, we answer. "Bush, I don't like." This statement didn't surprise me--whether pro or con, everybody has something to say about American politics. But then he said he liked Carter; he was good. And Rice. Condi! She is the best today. I laughed, shocked, and thought to myself, what percentage of American high school seniors would know about Jimmy Carter, much less have an opinion of him?