PS: Sorry for my english, it’s not my native tongue, and not even my second one.

I imagine a good Syrian friend of mine coming to London, with all the preconcieved expectations that his superlative love and education on Shakespeare, Coleridge and Wordsworth might have created. On arriving at Trafalagar Square a group of topless 14 year old boys trample over these expectations by means of empty White Ace cans and cigarette butts, their breath stinking of linguistic vulgarity. Nevertheless, I would wager that shock may turn to disappointment which in turn would force him to turn back to his imagination’s reasoning behind visiting Britain. And, instead, he writes back home with information about the tube, the Times and the fact that if he was to walk through Trafalgar Square, frequented by foreign visitors and students, late at night, he could sware that he heard the sounds of a Saxophone playing ‘Baker Street’, rather than his expectation’s disappointment in the droning thud of another Soho reveller having had one too many.

Travelling thrives on expectation. But when a destination has nothing but those expectations provided to a foreigner, it’s only natural to consolidate that plane ticket with a bit of poetic lisence.

Let’s also bear in mind that it’s Mr. Belt’s job to write a riveting read on a fairly unknown place. It may well have been the best article with the word ‘Syria’ in in a decade, but the patience and slow but careful measure being taken in Syria’s development and modernisation is not something I would ‘expect’ to want to read about whilst sitting in a cramped underground carriage back home returning after another monotonous day at work.

Most importantly, though, it doesn’t jive with how I feel the place has changed over the past decades. Even if it is politically uptight now, it is NOWHERE as uptight as it was 10 or even 5 years ago. People *do* want to leave – but not because of a lack of political expression. They are far more concerned with the economic suffering most Syrians not in the elite are enduring. I think that the NG article really misses both of these, in a big way, and is sensationalized differently to meet an editorial demand. In short, it feels like it was written for the New York Times Magazine, and not for National Geographic.