Two days ago, I was doing an interview with a prominent philosopher.

In the course of our conversation, he said, "When the dictatorship came..."

I opened my eyes wide in bewilderment.

"What? You don't know that word?" he asked.

I responded, "I do know that word. I've just never heard anyone say it here in Syria."

In fact, I learned the word several years ago in America, when I was reading articles about Syria on a (banned) dissident Web site -- as a way to keep up with my Arabic. The word kept on coming up, so I looked it up. I was then baffled that I had managed to learn to read pieces of Arabic philosophy, the Koran, pre-Islamic poetry... but my teachers in Damascus had failed to teach us something as simple as the word "dictatorship."

My interviewee used the word several times again throughout our meeting.

Each time he did, I found myself laughing. Not the kind of laughter that comes from hearing something funny. But the kind of laughter that comes from feeling a sense of relief, like when you've recovered from the terror of misplacing your wallet for 5 minutes, when you think, "Everything's OK now."