My first trip to the Arab World went in 1993 to the Syria of dictator Hafiz al-Assad and left a tremendous mark on me. Muezzins were crying from their minaretts at every corner, the Souk was an amazing labyrinth of secrets to me and huge, oversized posters and  paintings of Assad, were everywhere  Almost everybody I talked, did not want to mention his name or, if at all, was speaking of him, the “Lion of Damascus”, in a reverent, almost intimidated way. After another trip to Syria in early 1994 I had already boarded my plane back from Damascus to Frankfurt. Supposed to depart at 2am in the morning, the passengers had been left waiting for hours in the plane, clueless why the departure clearance was still withheld. Only after arriving in Frankfurt with many hours delay we learned the true reason: Basil al-Assad, first chosen as heir by his dictator father Hafiz, had crashed his car and his life at the roundabout shortly before the airport, in an desperate attempt to race with his Mercedes sports car to the airport to reach the Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. How would Syria (and the Middle East) would look today if the way more power-savvy Basil and not the former eye doctor Baschar, Hafiz al-Assads second son, would have followed his father?