Day 19: Lattakia - Be our guest, be our guest

So I didn't go to Damascus today as I planned. Instead I ended up teaching Sam and Grace, two young travellers from Britain via the Netherlands, how to play crackgammon. Then the monkey was on my back and we sat in the local tea house playing all afternoon.

In the morning, before heading out, Mohammed's crazy uncle had a visit from his dentist. Not just any dentist. This guy was a gypsy dentist who carried his surgery gear around in a black leather satchel. He was re-cementing Mohammed's uncle's front teeth, which are fakes. This is what a Syrian gypsy dentist and his patient look like, by the way.

Lattakia worked its magic on me slowly. The sea air, the laidback atmosphere, the cheerful people, all of these things worm their way into one's affections until plans for onward travel take on a distasteful, unpleasant quality. Why would I want to sit on a bus for hours and then fight through the streets of Damascus looking for a place to sleep? I'm sitting in the sun, the sea breeze is cooling my heels and I have unlimited games of crackgammon stretching ahead of me like the soothing dunes of the Sahara. I had been sucked into the Black Hole of Lattakia and I was Ernest Borgnine.

As we sat at the cafe, playing away, a man wearing glasses and sporting quite pronounced but not altogether unpleasant teeth strode purposefully up to the table, looked us over cursorily and announced "My name is Sami. You will all be my guests for dinner tonight." That was how he introduced himself. Sami went on to explain that he was a local farmer and would be honoured if we would join him, his wife and his wife's mother for an evening of traditional Syrian food and music at the local swanky hotel, Al-Cazino. Of course we accepted. Over the course of the evening, however, it became increasingly clear to me that if Sami was a farmer, I was Jesus.

Sam and Grace moved to another table to play each other and Sami joined me at the board. He ordered tea for us both and then proceeded to hand me my ass in a merciless fashion. I learned a great deal from playing him. He called his wife several times and eventually she arrived, driving his car. She was wearing make-up, tight jeans and a leopard print top. Their Filipino maid was sitting in the front with them. Sam, Grace and I piled into the back.

At their apartment, Sam, Grace and I were offered fruit, candy and nuts while Sami and his wife bustled about getting ready. Their Filipino maid fetched drinks and, when Sami and his wife were not in the room, happily answered questions about how she ended up in Syria. She told us that lots of Filipinos work in the Arab world as domestics. Her agency in the Phillippines sent her to Lebanon, which she hated, and then offered her the choice of going back to Lebanon or to Syria. She chose Syria. I asked her if she liked it. She waited pointedly until Sami's wife left the room and then said that it was better than Lebanon, but with a look on her face that said she would much rather be somewhere else entirely.

Sami and his wife were a very progressive couple. They eschewed traditional dress and formality in favour of very Western habits. Sami happily talked to us while wearing his towel straight out of the shower. He and his wife had a playfulness that I had never seen in an Arab country before. His wife showed us stacks of photo albums, including their wedding pictures, in which she is sporting quite the quiff and wearing what would be classed as a racy number even by Western standards.

Sami's mother-in-law arrived with her Filipino maid. Apparently they are all the rage in Lattaki right now. Mother-in-law was a really tough audience. She spoke no English and glared at me in that tight-lipped manner that older women have that gives you the impression that they've seen through you in some way even if they haven't. For a while I was sure she had smelled Jew on me, but I was thrown a lifeline that I pounced on to great effect. Sami was watching the news and the Future party was mentioned. I asked him who he supported in Lebanon. He said that he was for Hezbollah, 100%. He also said that I would be hard pressed to find anyone in Syria who didn't take Hezbollah's side. He said that many, including himself, had written Hariri off as a Western puppet. I immediately whipped out my camera and showed him the pictures of me in Baalbek, at the gift shop, in the mosque. I told him about my meeting with Abou Yasser and Fatah al-Intifada. He translated for his mother-in-law. She broke into a veritable sunstorm of smiles. Problem solved. I was in. I was one of the family.

We headed for the restaurant, which was situated in the lobby of the Al-Cazino hotel. When we arrived, the room was empty. It was Thursday night, which is Friday night in the Muslim World. We were brought hummus, baba ganoush and salads which were excellent. The meal progressed at a very lackadaisical pace. Sami had insisted that we would drink with him, so while he put away glass after glass of arak, Sam and I had been given a litre of Grant's scotch to deal with.

As we grazed on the excellent meze, Sami told us a little more about himself. He was from the same village as Bashar Assad, the Syrian President, and was also from the same family. They had cousins in common. The way you can tell the members of the Assad family is from their eyes. Only the members of Assad's family from that particular village have blue eyes. All other Syrians have brown eyes. Sami told us that Bashar is a great practical joker and loves a laugh. From the millions of portraits of him glaring down from every available surface in Syria, you'd never have guessed. Sami wanted me to stay in Lattakia and hang out. He told me to forget Damascus. He told me to call my wife and have her fly out. He told me I shouldn't go home. For some reason, I couldn't help but pick up on an undertone of power in his entreaties. This guy wasn't a farmer. When I asked around about him later, people simply shrugged and said that nobody knows what he did, but most likely the secret police. All I know is that he was a flawlessly generous host, an excellent dancer and a very funny guy when drunk, something he claimed he only did one night a week.

Meat arrived on great sizzling platters. Bread, salad and hummus was refilled. We ate until we were fit to burst. The band kicked up a notch and soon the dance floor was filled with young Syrians in trendy clothes, snapping their fingers and strutting their stuff. Sami and his wife cut a rug real nice as well. Grace and I even managed to get Sam in all his Englishness to take to the dance floor and convulse enthusiastically in a close approximation of being in time.

At the end of the evening, the band left, the lights came up and the revellers simply took the instruments from the stage and began playing by themselves, singing and dancing around their tables. I got behind the drum kit and jammed along to a few Syrian folk numbers. When I got up to leave, I noticed that I had been dancing so vigorously in my flip-flops that I had cut my foot in several places and was bleeding quite badly.

Sami dropped Sam, Grace and I back at the hotel and bid us good night. I collapsed into bed, a third of a litre of scotch the worse for wear and dreading the hangover to come.