Yesterday, I got an email from the Wall Street Journal office in Dubai, asking if I could go to the scene of the bombing in Damascus that morning.

As soon as I got the message, I took a taxi to the neighborhood. When I told the taxi driver where I was going, he said, "That's my neighborhood."

My first thought was, "How fortunate," so I started interviewing him and taking notes.

In the course of our conversation, I asked him, "Did any of your friends die in the bombing?"

He responded, "I don't know yet. I started my shift around 6 a.m., before the explosion."

As we approached the neighborhood of shattered glass and rubble, I felt a sense of dread -- because that's when it hit me. It's not just a news story, it's real life. I might be with this guy when he finds out one of his friends was killed.

Instead, he introduced me to the neighbors. I then sent the information to New York.

Today I went through one of the countless "security checks" I've had since I started living in Syria in 2000.

This morning, two intelligence officers came to my home to question me for two hours.

Some of the questions were routine, like, "When did you enter the country?" and "How long are you planning on staying?"

Others were more personal, such as, "Who are your friends?" and "Who do you visit?"

Of course, I didn't give them the names of any of my friends (except for my former landlord, whom they already know I know anyways -- and I had to provide some sort of an answer).

They asked if I would help them. I told them I didn't really know what was going on in Syria, except for what I read in the newsapers or saw on TV. Of course, I could never be an informant.

After they left, I washed my face and had breakfast in the middle of the day.

I don't know how to describe the feeling of being interrogated, except to tell you what it doesn't feel like.

You know what it feels like when the person you're interested in finally kisses you, and you walk down the street and you feel a glow on your face and you can't stop smiling?

This is just the opposite. I went to the local bakery, walking almost in slow motion, my eyes and face feeling dead, unable to smile, completely oblivious to my surroundings.

At the end of the day I guess I should consider myself lucky. I'm still here, and I'm not afraid.

Most Syrians have only heard of Dwaylaa – a poor neighborhood of Syrians and Iraqi refugees near the eastern gate to the Old City of Damascus that’s technically an illegal settlement.

But to me it’s home, and it’s where I go every night to sleep after a full day of working as a journalist in Damascus.

I found a room to rent here when I arrived in Syria just over two months ago. It was the first room available at a good price, $70 per month, so I took it.

It’s a different world from the neighborhoods in Damascus where I do most of my news interviews.

You won’t find any brand name clothing stores, wifi, or luxury cars. There aren’t even many trees.

But you will find is a lot of spirit.

I started noticing it when I saw the weddings in the neighborhood, one after another in the summer.

Each wedding strictly follows the tradition of the province where the family is from. Sometimes you can hear the drums as the procession marches down the alleyways, other times the festivities will last several days, depending on the custom.

Sometimes families are able to rent a nice car for the bride and groom, sometimes the entire party piles into a convoy of old buses. Entertainment usually takes the form of a casette tape of Arabic music and turning an alleyway into a makeshift dance hall.

My landlady, a single mother, brings her two young daughters downstairs to the street whenever she hears a wedding procession.

No one seems to care when strangers appear at their wedding. Instead, they give them treats – just like the other guests.

It’s this kind of inclusiveness that makes me wonder about the point of exclusiveness.

When I leave Dwaylaa in the mornings, I sometimes worry if I’m dressed nice enough for my interviews.

When I come home to Dwaylaa, I feel a sense of relief, because I know I don’t have to impress anyone.

No one here tries to speak to me in English or French, the merchants charge me local prices and sometimes they don’t even charge me at all.

What amazes me even more is how people are able to enjoy themselves so much with so little.

The shops are the size of closets, but people still get their business done. Almost everyone has to take at least two buses to work in the morning, but they they still manage to come home during their lunch breaks to eat with their families. There are no outdoor cafes, but groups of men still gather together in the mornings and sit on the curb to drink tea together. Instead of using strollers or backpacks, parents here can usually be seen carrying their babies in their arms.

I, too, have gotten used to the simple life.

When I need a shirt ironed, I run downstairs to the man who presses clothes within less than a minute, the nearby tailor sews up the holes in my shirts seamlessly, and the nearby hairdresser can style my hair for less than $2.

To me, Dwaylaa is the best kept secret in Damascus.

I try not laugh when people tell me I should change neighborhoods; or when I get off at my bus stop and people raise their eyebrows when they see the way I look and then see the neighborhood I’m going to.

Sometimes I come home at 1 a.m., and I see a group of Iraqi wedding guests still dancing in the street. I think to myself, “What? How can they be having so much fun? Don’t they know how bad things are in the world?”

I remember someone once told me that it’s possible to be happy anywhere.

The people of Dwaylaa prove that.

… It is therefore with great sadness that I report that I’ll be leaving Dwaylaa at the end of the month. I cannot get a residency permit while living in an illegal settlement. Even more distressing, while doing my paperwork, I learned that there are plans to destroy the neighborhood to make way for luxury housing.

I was in Syria on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001. That would have been the morning New York time.

I was listening to the news on Radio Orient when I heard about the attacks. Assuming I'd misunderstood the news in Arabic, I then waited to hear it in French.

Baffled by what I'd heard, I decided to take a walk throught the Old City of Damascus, where I was living at the time.

The scene must have been identical throughout the entire world: Everyone had stopped what they were doing, and they were gathered around television sets at local shops with their jaws dropped in astonishment.

I then went back home, and I called my family in San Francisco, walking up my father at around 7 a.m. Pacific time.

I said to him, "Turn on the news."

He said, "What? Did something happen in Syria?"

I replied, "No, America."

I'm not sure he understood the concept that I was calling from the Middle East to tell him that America had been attacked.

I'd heard on CNN, that Palestinians had celebrated when they'd heard of the attacks.

So, I went to the local refugee camp in Damascus to see for myself.

No one there was celebrating. Even if they wanted to, such political expression would be forbidden here.

Most of the Palestinians I saw there looked defeated. They had their own news that day -- Israel had invaded several villages in the West Bank.

I had an appointment that day at the UN, which I kept despite the indescribable distraction. Where else was I going to go that day?

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."

I want to take this opportunity to talk about toilet paper.

It’s a strange subject, but it’s one that everyone talks about here.

Every morning, you’ll hear the local toilet paper merchant yelling “Maharam, maharam!” from his one-seat car, hoping to lure customers by telling everyone what he’s selling.

Toilet paper is very important here. I guess it is everywhere. But here, it’s like a commodity.

Someone I interviewed for an article 5 years ago said, “We used to have to smuggle toilet paper in from Lebanon.” He told me not to quote him on that, but of course I couldn’t resist.

If you go to the bathroom in a public place, you usually have to bring you own toilet paper with you. This is because the item is so sought after that people will steal the entire roll of tissues from the bathroom before the next customer gets there. And this is in a country with one of the lowest rates of theft in the world, where many people leave their doors unlocked.

I must have been here at least a year before I realized that most restaurants charge for the box of tissues that’s on the table when you get there. That’s because so many people take the box of tissues home without asking, they figured they should charge for them.

Five years ago, in March 2003, I took a road trip from Damascus to Baghdad with a couple of friends. On the Syrian-Iraqi border, I asked to use the bathroom. Being used to the custom in Syria, I asked the Iraqi border guard for “maharam” before entering the stall. He didn’t understand, so I kept on repeating the word over and over (I was beginning to fear it was one of those countries you hear about on National Geographic that actually doesn’t use toilet tissue) . I finally made some sort of a gesture that he must have understood, because he immediately exclaimed, “Kleenex!”

Well, if that’s what they call it there, then that’s what I’ll call it – as long as I get my precious tissue paper.