C. and I are taken hostage by Syrians while flying to Israel. We're gassed during the flight; when we awaken, we're prisoners. None of the other passengers are around, I don't know what happened to them.
Syria, apparently, is trying to lift itself clear of the "mud-and-blood/primitive barbarism" image that most of the Middle East has been painted with in the mind of the rest of the world, so they've started producing a thin glossy magazine (looking an awful lot like The Weekly Standard) called JIHAD-- sort of a sexy, sassy marketing approach for the 21st Century, something to set them apart from the wild-eyed guys with scraggly beards and hair and dirty AK-47's.
So they woke us up at 5AM and made us sit through a whole morning of hair and makeup and then they drove us out into the desert and subjected us to an eight-hour photoshoot. The photographer was pushy and hard to understand. "No! Sit THERE and put your hand on her arm like THAT! No! Allah curse you for the American dog you are! How can I work with such people?"
I woke up before I got to see the proofs.