Free Avoiding Prison & Other Noble Vacation Goals by Wendy Dale Page A

“No, I meant the bong thing.”
    â€œThe
nargeileh.”
    â€œYeah. Did you order us one of those?”
    â€œYes. Strawberry.”
    This had to be code for something.
    â€œHadi, strawberry opium?”
    â€œIt’s not opium. Whoever heard of strawberry opium? This is normal, everyday strawberry-flavored tobacco.”
    I felt rather foolish at my mistake, but things only got worse when the waiter returned with our order. He was carrying the
nargeileh,
a vase-shaped glass filled with water and equipped with a three-foot-long hose. He skillfully plugged the upper end of the gadget with a metal tray, added a chunk of tobacco, and placed a disk of red-hot charcoal on top. The tobacco began to burn and Hadi handed me the hose, gallantly insisting that I begin.
    I wasn’t sure exactly how to maneuver this apparatus. Normally, whenever I found myself in any awkward social situation, I watched the other people at my table to figure out which fork I was supposed to be wielding, but here I was in the land of Middle Eastern hospitality, where the Lebanese graciously waited for you to start, insisting that guests always go first.
    Pete had already told me about the difficult situation this same custom had once placed him in at an elegant party in Beirut when the hostess bounded upon him with a tray full of roasted pigeon. Pete was not really in the mood for roasted pigeon and never had been, but a refusal would have been seen as a grave insult to the woman of the house, who had devoted hours to basting and cooking the birds, not to mention the amount of time she must have spent rounding them up at the park. He was going to have to eat one and what was worse, he was the center of attention; they were all waiting for the guest to begin, and he didn’t know whether you picked pigeon up with your fingers chicken style or used a fork. He timidly reached for a small bird and plopped it into his mouth, crunching on the tiny bones and trying to swallow it out of his life as quickly as possible.
    Now I was in a similar situation. I had never smoked out of a hose before, but I sportingly placed the tube to my lips and took a deep breath, as self-conscious as an adolescent Arabic girl taking her first inhale out of a
nargeileh
in her high school bathroom.
    Other than the fact that there was a tube in my mouth, it was like smoking a cigarette—a berry-flavored one. Nicotine flooded my brain, sped up my heart rate, and made my head spin. But this was just the beginning. Lebanese tradition demanded that smoking a
nargeileh
go on for an entire afternoon. I passed Hadi the hose, took a sip of my coffee, and decided it wasn’t such a bad country after all.
    On my last weekend in Beirut, I was all for the idea of running off to yet another smoke-filled café, but Peter had a better idea: detox. Although he was a staunch supporter of the virtues of alcohol, like a true Californian he was an adamant antismoker and had every intention of ridding me of the nicotine addiction that Hadi had spent the past few days carefully cultivating.
    â€œWe’re going to get you some fresh air,” he said, pushing me into his car.
    This didn’t sound nearly as entertaining as inhaling smoke. “Couldn’t we just pick up some muscle relaxants at the drugstore?”
    Peter rolled his eyes and started the engine. He was determined to show me another face of Lebanon, an ancient side, and for the rest of the afternoon we wandered about the ruins of one bygone civilization after another.
    Our first stop was the Phoenician port city of Sidon, where we roamed through a thirteenth-century Crusader sea castle. The structure wasn’t much bigger than a typical house in Beverly Hills, but it was made entirely of stone and appeared to be rising out of the sea. It sat on a tiny island connected to the mainland by a short bridge.
    Then, it was onto Tyre, a three-thousand-year-old city that had been conquered by big name