Homs, Syria

Homs is Syria’s third-largest city, a mid-sized industrial town along the Aleppo-Damascus highway best known for its oil refineries and as the home of Baath University. I watched George W. Bush’s inaugural address here last month at the house of my friend Abu Darwish, a programmer who lives in a modest middle-class neighborhood with his wife and three young children, all studying English at their father’s insistence. “He loves the USA,” his wife told me. The children laughed when she rolled her eyes behind their father’s back as he was blowing kisses at Bush’s image on TV. She doesn’t love America right now and thinks that Bush hates Muslims and Arabs. “No,” Abu Darwish argued gently with his wife, “he’s talking about freedom for Muslims and Arabs. God bless you, Bush.”