Old City, Damascus, Syria

On a map, Jerusalem and Damascus are separated by 135 miles, about the distance between Los Angeles and San Diego. If you could drive from one to the other, it would be a shorter trek than making the run from New York to Boston.

But, in a very real sense, you can't get there from here.

There are no direct flights, no open borders. Like most nations in the Middle East, Syria does not recognize Israel, a reality that makes it difficult to travel between the Jewish nation and most of its neighbors.

Traveling between the two requires an elaborate scrub of anything that suggests that you have ever been to Israel.

Journalists, businessmen and diplomats who shuttle between Israel and its neighbors usually carry two passports. One, universally dubbed the "dirty" passport, is reserved for Israeli stamps and work visas. The other, known as the "clean" passport, is reserved for traveling in the rest of the Middle East.

As The Country That Cannot Be Named, Israel even has an over-used code name among those who travel hither and yon: Dixie.

Before heading into Syria, I strip myself of anything Israeli, from Israeli money to my Israeli press pass. I rip off the Hebrew writing on my saline solution and scratch off the Hebrew writing on my toiletry bag.

I swap out my business cards with my Jerusalem address for ones with the home office in Washington.

Getting into Syria has gotten more difficult for U.S. journalists in the last year, so getting to Damascus this time began with a fruitless week in Amman trying to secure a visa followed by seven hours camped out at the Jordan-Syrian border waiting for an OK from Damascus.

By conservative estimates, people have been living in Damascus for 10,000 years, making it one of the oldest - if not The Oldest - cities in the world.

They say that John the Baptist's head is here, in a shrine in the old city inside one of the largest mosques in the world. Nearby is a shrine to Salah al-Din, the legendary Muslim warrior who toppled the Crusader empire in the Twelfth Century and ended 88 years of Crusader rule over Jerusalem.

It was on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus that Paul was struck blind by a Biblical vision and converted to Christianity.

Hopes for the so-called Damascus Spring promised by young Syrian President Bashar Assad faded long ago. Portraits of the president, along with his feared father, Hafez, and his older brother, Basil, who was killed in a car accident, are omnipresent in Damascus, as if to send a message that the government is watching.

People are cautious and often wary of talking. When I tell one new friend that I live in Jerusalem, he quietly urges me to take care and not mention that too loudly, if at all.

Even with the authoritarian overlay, Damascus is a lively, thriving city. Young Syrians in tight jeans, DKNY shirts and Armani suits gather in underground clubs and rooftop bars for drinks. Couples nuzzle on plush couches in dark, moody bars.

Shoppers pop in and out of stores like Benneton and Desire and Elegance.

On hot summer nights in the souk, families crowd into an ice cream shop with Hezbollah flags hanging from the ceiling.

Young women, some with hijabs, others not, gather at shops that whip up personal perfume for their customers.

I've come to Damascus to talk to Khaled Mashaal, the pivotal Hamas leader in exile who is central not only to resolving the dispute between Hamas and Fatah, but also to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

More on that tomorrow...