Basil Bashar, a Damascus Dictator, Was a Cult Figure.

A lot of people have actually compared him to Michael Corleone. Basil owned a stable of sweet sports cars and tore ass around town on a regular basis. He had a personality cult that rivaled his fathers. When I was a student in high school, I would walk the busy streets of Damascus Aleppo or Latakia and find the walls and windows of shops and buildings peppered with posters and photographs of Basil.