Pomegranate Seeds and Preity Zinta

Hi from Damascus, where I am currently idling away in my king-size hotel bed, eating pomegranate seeds and watching Mad Men only floors away from the venerable JC, perhaps my most admired ex-president. He's in town to, um, meet with Hamas leadership, and I'm in town to, you know, work, so I figure we should be friends. I've been staking out the lobby to try and bump into him, but so far have only met a few young cute very obviously American Secret Service guys... not a bad consolation prize, especially in this neck of the woods.

When I flew here on Sunday morning at o'dark hundred, I was once again amazed by the wonders of the new Emirates Terminal 3, the dreamiest airport terminal ever, both because it is brand new and supermodern and sleek, and [cough] because so far it only houses flights to North America, Europe, and the Middle East. I'm just saying... people actually wait in line, and no one sleeps sprawled out on the airport floor as though they're in a refugee camp [which, in all fairness, they may be coming from/going to]. And there's Starbucks in the terminal, red cups and all - it's like my own personal "reacculturation to the West" travel space.

Sooooo, what's been going on since last we met... basically Syria Syria Syria, eat sleep play eat run, Syria Syria. Last weekend I went to the red-carpet opening night gala of the Dubai International Film Festival, or as we affectionately call it here, "DIFF." We got to the event late which meant we "had" to sit in VIP for the screening of "W" that preceded the gala, which was fairly insanely cool because I had Danny Glover in the row behind me and Oliver Stone in the row in front of me. I had to sit in Preity Zinta's seat (I don't know who she is either, but she's big in Bollywood), which made for a semi-awkward moment when she arrived even later than us and had to sit in Ben Affleck's seat, who luckily hadn't made it to the screening, thus ending the game of musical VIP chairs. The gala afterwards involved a private beach and firedancers/stilt-walkers and lots of free champagne and prominent local men courting, ehrm, Russian women, and run-ins with many people who I didn't particularly want to see... standard Dubai fare.

Anyhow, now I have one last day in Damascus (hopefully with some time to Christmas shop in the souks... expect a lot of Hizbullah-themed Christmas presents this year), then I fly back to Dubai tomorrow morning, and then I fly to Nashville (via Doha and New York) on Friday morning! I am actually not dreading the trip this time around, as I expect Qatar Airways will be 14 hours of movie-watching, seat-reclining, wine-sipping bliss... a nice change from my usual 5-hour layover in Frankfurt/Zurich followed by a god-awful transatlantic leg on United.

Sooooooooooooo... if by the grace of God you are already in America, keep it warm for me, and see you soon!