Vancouver Woman Missing In Syria

Vancouver woman missing in Syria | MetaFilter

Also, as lovely as the Middle East is in the early summer, one might take a moment to read the State Department's warning about Syria (I know, she's of this strange Canadian persusasion, but if I could easily be mistaken for some diphthong-challenged American, I would probably pay attention to countries it considers dangerous) and realize, hey, kidnapping? Totally a possibility. I hitch-hiked solo through Syria in the mid 1980s, at the height of the Reagan foreign policy, when Libya had just been bombed. Never have I met a more gracious and hospitable group of people in my life. If something bad has happened to this woman, then I suspect it reflects an encounter with a singular bad person, the sort of random awful event many women in the United States and elsewhere have also encountered. I know Syria is an imminent danger to the US as a trainee member of the axis of evil and all that. That doesn't mean it is unsafe to travel in, especially for a non-American. Well, as a woman who's traveled alone a lot, it's not always that easy or feasible to keep people aware of your day to day goings on. Especially when they are 6,000 miles away, sitting at home & totally focused on playing magic card games. Doing that kind of traveling, lot of times you are concentrated on playing things by ear. Plus the internet is not always easily accessible, and the phone is expensive.
Another "positive" scenario he described was that she's lost in the Syrian jail system. It's not so hard to get arrested in Syria as a Canadian woman and under normal circumstances the Syrians are polite enough to let us know when they arrest a Canadian citizen (before torturing her). Tourists tend to take a lot of photos, something the Syrian authorities are apparently not so find of. I thought it was pretty amazing how much info he had obtained in such a short amount of time. A traveller identified which hotel she stayed at last. Someone else found her things at the hotel and then looked at what clothes were present in her luggage so they could identify which shirt she was wearing when she disappeared (she apparently only had 2 or 3 outfits). It may not be much, but for a family that probably hasn't slept much in a few days it's probably a big deal to get even this much help.
Hama is the most conservative city in Syria, home of the Muslim Brotherhood, and to be honest not the friendliest town to visit if you are a foreigner.

The International Who's Who of Women 2002

Guide to microforms in print, Author, title

Quill & quire

The Athenæum, a journal of literature, science, the fine arts, music, and the drama

The Boston globe index