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found in Jewish quarter of Damascus with their passports stuffed in their mouths, dead.” So he laughs and says, “No, that's not the headline. The headline is: ‘One American Congressman found with his passport in his mouth dead -- the other returned safely to his hotel.”

At that point the Syrian Foreign Office people arrive, one the driver, who I didn't see, and the other someone whom we had seen the day before -- he had met us at the airport. He said he was going to take us to the Jewish quarter. Well, we get in the car. You go for miles and then you get into the old part of the city, which is very much like the old part of Jerusalem, very narrow alleys. It's clear after a while, and our guide says, “We're lost. I've never been here before, and we just can't find the way.” And as we go down one alley after another, we finally get to an alley where the car can't go any further, and I'm really upset now, thinking, “Oh, shit, what's going to happen now?”

So we get out of the car, and it's very dark, and we walk, and we come to a rather large plaza, open area, and there we see at the other end of the plaza a guy, an elderly man, wearing a yarmulka, and he's walking. I said, “He'll know where.” And we rush across the plaza to get a hold of this guy. I'm thinking to myself, “He must think, ‘My God, it's a pogram!’” (laughs) So we rush across and we get him, and the Syrian asks him where the synagogue is, and he takes us there. We never would have found it.

So we go into the synagogue, and it's a very small building, and there are about 12 or so people -- two or three adolescents;