Is there any such language as "Syrian"?

I’m reading a not-so-great Helen MacInnes novel called The Hidden Target, in which the heroine is on a tour of Asia and mentions that communicating will not be a difficulty because her traveling companions speak many languages, including one compadre who speaks “Syrian.”

I was under the impression that 95%+ of Syrians spoke Arabic.

I didn’t know there was a language called “Syrian” at all. I’ve heard of something called “Syriac,” but I thought that was a dead language since the Arabs arrived.

So is it I or Helen MacInnes that is ignorant of what language the Syrians speak?

Lonely Planet sez: the languages spoken in Syria are Arabic, Kurdish, Armenian, Turkish, and English.

The Assyrian-Chaldeans of Iraq speak Syriac.

Here’s a few (possibly) rlevant links from ethnologue:

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Syria

Perhaps MacInnes meant the Syrian dialect of Arabic. There is considerable variation in colloquial Arabic - speakers of one dialect can not necessarily understand those of another.