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Article: Syrians test new signs of freedom By Cameron W. Barr.(World)
- Article from:
- The Christian Science Monitor
- Article date:
- February 13, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 The Christian Science Publishing Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The other evening a spillover crowd of about 300 people packed into a private apartment in a suburb of Damascus to hear an amateur political theorist - his day job is dentistry - read quickly through a quietly revolutionary speech.
Following the hour-long discourse, Wejdan, a 30-something Damascene with reddish hair and a communist past, stood up to stretch her legs after sitting in the apartment's chilly stairwell. "For a very short time," she explained with a smile, "we have begun to feel free."
How long this feeling will last or where it will lead, no one is certain. But in recent months it has grown clear that Syria's new president, Bashar ...