Beirut: Farewell to the Arabs
443
used drugs. And, after all, hasheesh was so integral a part of
Arab life, I ought to try it once before leaving the Middle
East.
IN THE HASHEESH DENS
"I WILL take you to several places, the best one first,"
Hagop said, as we left the restaurant. It was nine o'clock.
We stopped before a decrepit building with an unlighted
hallway. We stepped inside, walked up a short flight of stairs,
and felt for a door handle along the wall. When we found it
Hagop knocked.
"Tell no one you're from America. Speak Turkish," he
whispered.
The door was opened by an Arab with a week's growth of
beard, dressed in grimy black shirt and trousers. We entered
a foyer lighted by a kerosene lamp. The Arab led the way
through another empty room into the hasheesh "salon." Four
dirty plaster walls, and a floor littered with sputum—dried
and drying—struck my eye first. There were benches on each
side, and short, squat, straw-bottom chairs. On them sat the
addicts. All were conspicuously young, save one, who seemed
to be in his forties but might have been much