At the border, they said, “no visa, wait, fax Damascus, wait.” My taxi left without me of course. At the duty free shop I ran into a guy from Portland who is studying in Beirut. It is a small world. I was prepared to wait another twelve hours for this visa. I lucked out with only three hours. Back in another taxi, I went to the bus station in Damascus and bought a ticket to Amman, Jordan, or so I thought.
Before I got on the bus, I asked the driver, “Amman, Jordan?” He nodded and motioned for me to get on. I felt sure I was headed in the right direction and did not worry too much. Even so, when we were on the highway, I checked the direction of the sun to make sure we were going in the right direction—you never know. We were going south toward Amman; all was okay. Almost. After two hours, I ended up in Suwayda, Syria, near the Jordanian border. Fortunately, I was helped by a friendly local guy that spoke a tiny amount of English. The problem was that I could not get to Jordan from there. I had to go all the way back to Damascus first. He asked for me about a bus back to Damascus that evening and there wasn’t one. He invited me to stay with him that evening and said he would put me on a bus in the morning. I thought it would be interesting, but being an American in predominantly Islamic rural Syria, I was a little nervous.
We took a taxi for about a kilometer and then worked at fitting into a minibus. When I said I wanted to pay my fare for the taxi and minibus, Ali laughed and pinched my cheek like I said something silly. I was in his care and my money was no good. The difficulty was getting all the people (17), bags, boxes, and my backpack to fit in a minibus designed for ten people. People got in an out and moved around until finally after about ten minutes we were all sardined inside. We drove out of the town into the desert for about half an hour until we reached a little village where we picked up one more passenger. The minibus was jammed and I could not see anyway he could fit. That was my Western thinking holding me back. He squeezed in the front seat, mostly sideways, on the left of the driver. We drove for another thirty minutes through the now pitch black desert. I was starting to wonder where the hell we were going.
In the village of Irmon, we got out, thank god, and walked a block to Ali’s house, where I met his wife and two little girls. None of them had ever met an American before and they were ecstatic. His wife immediately changed into nice clothes with lots of jewelry. They spoke almost no English so it was hard to communicate. We had a good time drinking tea, eating sweets, and talking with dictionaries. In the morning, Ali wrote everything I needed in Arabic and took me to the next town, where he put me on a minibus and told the driver to make a special stop to drop me off at the bus station. Meeting Ali and staying with his family was one of those great experiences that offset all the times you get ripped off or hassled. 
