My guide, Mr. Maher, speaks decent English. We agree that Saturday at 9 am we would go to Abu Kamal and the border. I wanted to see what the exact edge of a war zone looked like, and how average Syrians dealt with life alongside chaos.

Saturday morning, Mr Maher promptly arrives in a cab, with a Syrian university student fluent in English, while a pair of Mukhabarat secret policeman followed.

Halfway to Abu Kamal, soldiers waved us through a military checkpoint and our secret policemen switched off. The new pair rode in a silver Russian Saab knockoff.

A photographer from Corbiss, the stock photo company, warned me about the Mukhabarat. I tried to avoid government interference in my interviews. The Ministry lied to the Corbiss photographer, thereby destroying his assignment. I couldn't risk that, so I didn't contact them until I returned from Abu Kamal.

I hired Mr. Maher as my own translator rather than rely on the Ministry of Information, because I feared that the translation might be off, or that a government presence might taint my interactions with people.

But somehow, probably through Mr. Maher, the Mukhabarat knew about me. I was pissed I couldn't avoid Al-Asad's long fingers in my reporting efforts.

The Mukhabarat, one of whom wore a yellow Nike hat, didn't say anything, but Mr. Maher told me he and other Syrians despised Bush for raining terror upon their corner of the globe.

And after standing at the last roadblock in Syria, where Highway 4 ends the tiny village of Al Hiri, and seeing 200 meters away, Old Glory planted in Iraqi soil, waving in the dry wind, towering over a line of five pointed green military barracks tents, I understood the resentment.

The US unilaterally closed the border between Abu Kamal and Al Qaim and built the base in November 2004. US GIs have been in Al Qaim since the first days of "Shock and Awe."

How many US troops live in those tents is known only to the Pentagon, which didn't respond to inquiries for this story.

Two Syrian soldiers in tan uniforms and red berets guard the shuttered border station. The soldiers—one tall and skinny, one short and fat, both with thick mustaches—prohibit photographing the stars and bars because they fear the US neighbors will shoot.

Straight ahead, a red, white, and black Syrian flag flaps in the center of the empty complex. Money changing, visa stamping, and duty-free shopping hum along at the Syrian borders with Turkey and Lebanon.

In Al Hiri, the village on the border, about nine yellow concrete buildings, spread across both sides of the road, look lonely, their only company a mural of Syrian strongman Hafez Al-Asad, the current dictator's late father.

Sunflowers bend to the sunlight despite the lethal US presence; laundry hangs on lines behind cinder and mud huts. Cows graze on the road shoulders, alongside shepherds and their flocks. A farmer and his horse plow a field, and nearby, men, women and children pick cotton, or qutun, its root word in Arabic.

No trucks pass customs here anymore—much to the dismay of local businessmen. Donkeys ignore the billboard hawking tires. This Saturday morning on the empty road, my interview attempts attract a crowd.

Within minutes eight or so men in grey robes and red and white keffiyeh headscarves gathered on the roadside. Ahmed Abu Kissim, 55, a farmer with a weathered, leather face and a weeks' worth of white stubble, speaks the loudest.

Bare footed boys wearing American T-shirts with Spider-Man and "Phoenix" logos, mill around, while other children peer from behind stone walls.

"There are some people who were murdered here," Abu Kissim says. "People were killed while they were praying, worshipping god. They were innocent citizens doing nothing."

He pauses, runs to his house 50 feet away, and returns bearing a dense, three-inch long, lead and brass bullet. The dull grey tip is worn, knicked, and blood-stained.

In spring 2005, while farmer Zedan Thawat supplicated in the local mosque, this stray American bullet pierced his stomach, Abu Kissim says.

Shaking his fist, Abu Kissim rages that his daughter Miriam lives in Al Qaim, he is unsure of her health and he cannot visit.

"The only solution and the clear solution is the withdrawal of American troops," Abu Kissim says, pounding his fist into his hand. "When this happens, we can go back to our safe condition. I want you to consider what it was like living here before America came."

When America bombs Al Qaim, as it has for almost three years, as it did in August and September 2005 in Operation Iron Fist, targeting guilty bridges across the wide Euphrates, the villagers in Al Hiri know.

"We feel our houses shake," Abu Kissim says. "Children are afraid. Just imagine how the land shakes under your feet."

One of the farmers angrily recalls how a bombing raid shook a pregnant woman's house so hard, scared her so much, that she went into premature labor and her baby died.

The late morning sun beats on the pavement, the temperature approaches 40 C. Youseff Salaam, a tall, skinny man of 25, offers a cigarette before placing one between his lips and lighting it with a wooden match.

Salaam, whose name means peace, describes how his 15-year-old cousin, Gassem Al-Muhammed, took a bullet to the belly in June 2005. Gassem was walking down the street and suddenly, Salaam says, he dropped to the road.

"I am happy with what bin Laden did," Salaam says. The sense of revenge is satisfying, Abu Kissim interjects, but Muslims shouldn't rejoice about September 11.

"We regret that people paid for Bush's fault," Abu Kissim says. "Bush is a dictator, a slayer. Islam does not kill."

Peace must prevail among God's people, for the sake of children, Abu Kissim says.

"In Syria, we have Islamic, Christian, and Kurdish people. We live together peacefully," he says. Farmers nod. "You can have a church and a mosque next to each other and there are no conflicts."

The historical record backs Abu Kissim. Roman ruins 35 kilometers west of Abu Kamal, in Salhiyeh, reveal an ancient village with a synagogue, a pagan temple and a Christian church side by side.

"Any reasonable Syrian will think this," Abu Kissim says. For emphasis, he furnishes the name of Safwan Kikoluf Abu Yakkub, a Christian who will gladly attest.

"What Abu Kissim said is 100 percent correct," Abu Yakkub says from the behind the desk of his travel agency in central Abu Kamal. "I have been living here for more than 45 years, and there have been no problems ever."

Part 1, 2, 3, 4.

11/22/06

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The Mukhabarat in their sporty silver Russian vehicle follow my cab away from the Iraqi border, which sits at the light poles in the background.

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