Deir ez-Zor* was our base on the Euphrates for several days as we roamed up and down the rivers that nurtured earliest civilization to visit Sumerian, Roman, and Islamic archaeological sites, often tailed by secret police in pick-ups with gun mounts in the truck bed and an AK-47 visible on the front seat. We lived on the incredible chicken shawarma and the delicious varieties of baklava sweets that we found on Khaled Bin Walid Street. Videos on June 10, 2011 showed 7000 protesters in downtown Deir -- the buildings seemed very familiar to me. Many have been killed in Deir, maybe by our escorts. Early in August, dozens of tanks took over the center of Deir. Hundreds were killed. Food and water were scarce. Yet, demonstrations in Deir continued. Now in July 2012, army tanks have been shelling residential areas for weeks and broken through resistance lines to roll into the city center again. Many have been killed.  And now, 2014, a NYTimes map shows the DAESH held areas, including Deir, and they correspond exactly to our travels along the Euphrates and north of Deir.     Shawerma shop on Google Maps.

*Also Dair az-Zawr, Deir al-Zour (NY Times). There is no standard transliteration from Arabic to English, so multiple phonetic spellings of a name appear.

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