Breakdown in the desert en route from Damascus to Amman: one indelible memory of Syria.

• Author: Liske, Patricia Ann

We were returning to our post at Embassy Amman from a weekend excursion to Damascus in June, 1995, and I was riding in the middle car of our three-car caravan. My husband was in the lead car; he knew the road, and the mandatory routine of crossing the Syrian-Jordanian border. We had a map from the Embassy illustrating the multiple offices, and the order in which each must be visited. I was in the car with a family that had just arrived In Amman, in case they got separated from the other two cars in the maze of trucks that always lined the road between Damascus and the border. It was dusk as we left "The Nunnery", the convent established on the spot where St. Paul's conversion threw him off his horse, and where Embassy families often stayed when visiting Damascus. We had gone only about 15 miles beyond the city limits when our car began to slow down and make a strange sound. The driver was able to safely guide the car off to the side of the road. Luckily. we were still directly in front of another US Embassy car, which pulled over with us. However, the lead car did not see what happened, because several trucks had moved in between our two cars and theirs.

After much discussion, we decided to send the good car - along with the driver of our car - back to find help at a gas station just outside of Damascus. I stayed with the family in the disabled car. After about a half an hour the car returned with a mechanic, who with a wrench and pair of pliers, diagnosed the problem as, "the clutch has died". Needless to say, he could not fix it there by the side of the road. The car needed to be towed back to the station, but the truck he came in was not big enough. So he had to return to the service station and come back with a larger truck, which would take at least another half hour. By now my husband, who noticed that none of the other cars were following his, had stopped and was waiting anxiously, concern growing with every minute.

There was another lively discussion about what to do. To simply leave the disabled car was not an option; there were eight of us left with small sedan that could comfortably seat only four. We finally reluctantly agreed to leave the family of three and their car at the gas station. We pooled all of the money we had and gave it to them for car repairs, hotel, food, taxi fare, and whatever else they may need along with a card in both Arabic and English with directions back to "The Nunnery".

By the time the remaining five of...