I DON'T MEAN TO PICK A FIGHT HERE, BUT ARABS ARE LOUSY DRIVERS.

It's not a religious thing: Sunnis, Shiites, Maronite Catholics, Greek and Syrian Orthodox, the Druze and the Alawites—they're all equally bad. I actually met a guy in Beirut who owned a driving school. I laughed so hard beer came out my nose.

When my taxi first exploded from Lebanon into Syria, I wasn't laughing anymore. On the Lebanese side of the border I'd grabbed a mandatory-yellow Plymouth Gran Fury, an early-1970s behemoth with tassels hanging from every surface. The backseat was covered in shag and big enough for a dance party. The dash was equipped with a miniature fan, a verse from the Koran, and a framed picture of Syrian president-for-life Bashar al-Assad. The hood ornament had been pirated from a Cadillac El Dorado. Pimp my ride, Baathist edition.

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I'd been counting on clearing customs with a tourist visa and a smile, but the camouflage-clad Syrian border guard wasn't buying. When he noticed the unusually large camera beside me on the seat—it more or less screamed "journalist"—he started yelling. I chuckled. He pointed an accusing finger. I made smiley faces. He thundered. But meanwhile the queue of cars behind us was growing, and in loud revolt. Harassed by the dunning of a dozen air horns and goaded by indignant drivers, the guard abruptly waved us through. The Gran Fury rocketed toward Damascus, one in a clot of cabs and cars unleashed all at once.

Map by Andy Potts

A true muscle car, the Fury had every advantage on a wide-open, curving expressway. We easily overtook a 1950s Nash Rambler, swerved around an overloaded minivan, and nipped past a Dodge Dart. As we topped 75 miles an hour, a titanium-silver fuel-injected 2005 Mercedes breezed past. Undaunted, my driver gunned it to 87. I was watching the speedometer because the Fury's seat belts had gone the way of the original eight-track.

Fifteen minutes, total, and Damascus came into sight. That was all it took to see the enemy capital in the distance. Fifteen minutes and you were further into the mystery of Syria than the United Nations was at the time. The UN is investigating Syrian officials for their widely assumed complicity in the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of neighboring Lebanon, in a Beirut car bombing last February. Just 15 minutes and you were closer than Saint Paul was when he was knocked off his horse. Fifteen minutes and you were as close as Muhammad supposedly ever came. Arriving with his armies in a.d. 630, he compared the first sight of Damascus to a glimpse of paradise, but he only saw the city from afar, at night, and never entered its gates.

Another 15 minutes across a dust bowl and we roared into the city and screeched into the central taxi yard so hot you'd think an Israeli tank column was on our tail.