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I f there had ever been an innocent abroad after Mark Twain, it was Ian Shaw of Toronto. He might have traveled in Europe, Asia, and South America - but nothing equaled this stint in the Middle East. Brimful with Syrian hospitality, curiosity, he had been welcomed as it had never felt before - as though he had never experienced anyone, or anywhere, as deeply and keenly as he now knew a handful of Syrians and their country.

As he now knew Hassan.

It was his final day in Damascus. He had spent three months there, ostensibly painting details of ancient Damascene archways for an architectural firm in Montreal. The portfolio of sketches in pen and ink was the least of his preoccupations, he now realized. From his arrival in the teeming, desert city to this traffic-choked moment in sweltering July heat, he felt like a moppet at large.

As muezzins chanted sundown call from their Old City minarets, he hurried through the busy Western Temple Gate into a crowded warren of alleys and bazaars that led past Hammam Nureddin to Souq al-Attarine.

He was late, perspiring.

Hassan - or "Hazza", as he preferred it - was waiting on Straight Street at the point where Medhet Pasha turns; from a covered market of spices and coffee into the huddled lane of sweets and nuts vendors that eventually becomes Bab Sharqi, the Christian quarter.

Hazza stood at the water-tap on the right, next to a shawarma café where at early light a man sold pastries and buns from a cart, distributing five or six to the more starving of the street boys. He was drinking a glass of mulberry juice from a hawker - and, as usual, talking animatedly, urgently, into his mobile phone.

Hazza could not tolerate Ian's leaving Syria.

Would try anything to stay him.

"You climb Mount Qassioun with me tonight," declared Hazza, politely slinging his glass onto the mulberry seller's trolley. "In capital letters."

His way of stressing importance.

Conversely, any talk of the U.S. president, the Syrian one, fundamentalists of any stripe, Israel, hip-hop, military service, or September 11th, was 'small letters.'

"Climb?"

"Yes, of course," he retorted primly, taking another phone call, simultaneously flagging a taxi. "The view is so glorious that even Prophet Mohammed couldn't handle it. Max is that you? Ah, kayfak inta ... how are you my friend, in capital letters of course ... ?"

This was Hazza - twenty-two years old, a decade Ian's junior. An unlikely, and generous friend whom he would never forget - who throughout his visit, if intermittently, had helped Ian negotiate the culture, the water-pipe evenings, the sumptuous Old City restaurants. A boy whose room in the Bab Touma neighborhood was decked out in yellow 'Smiley' logos, a giant union jack, postcards of Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus - and a handwritten note above the kitchen doorway, 'Mind Your Head.'

"Why couldn't Mohammed cope?" Ian asked.

"He wished to see Paradise, but at his death."

You shared Hazza's time with a phone-tree of pals, family, acquaintances, Saudis up for the summer, people he had met minutes ago, a year. It was his way of living - but also ambition.

He studied archaeology at the university, yet his passion was to be tour guide - in London, England - at any mention of which his eyes glazed over, and he would fall uncharacteristically silent, as though Paradise itself lay in his lap.

Like many Syrians, he wanted to flee Syria - and, with them too, had been refused a visa. His way of living helped him forget the obstacle. He survived haughtily - with defiance. A westerner in tow if he could manage.

"I've given your cell number to my wife," Ian told him, between calls, as the tiny cab weaved and honked through the bedlam of central Damascus toward the mountain slopes. "Jessica's meeting me at Montreal airport tomorrow evening."

"The countdown's begun!" he sing-sang. "In the morning you'll leave, and I'll be without a dear new friend."

"Three months is a long time, Hassan."

"She must be the Queen of wives to telephone so far."

"Jessica is," he replied. "A thousand times Queen."

Hazza rolled his eyes. More at the fact, Ian hoped, that the car's engine was not really up to a steep, unlit hill. Hazza tapped the driver's shoulder and pretended annoyance that the man would put such trash on a ruined Damascus highway.

"I told this gentleman his taxi is a donkey," Hazza said, from the back seat. "He should pay us a hundred Syrian pounds."

The driver smirked. A young, cheeky passenger behind. Gullible alien in front.

Hazza reached to turn up the radio and began clicking his fingers, gyrating - to a popular modern singer, Fairuz.

"Salaam-alaykum," said Ian, one of his few Arabic greetings - used habitually, if somewhat anxiously, every time he took a cab. It meant 'peace be upon you' which was a bit ecclesiastic for his taste.

Ian's intent was, 'I'm really happy to meet you, but rather nervous, I can't speak a word more, please don't injure me with your driving in this fanatic city or rip me off, seeing as I've made an effort to speak.' A lot to cram into 'hello' - but it invariably landed him the handshake and a friendly nod, if not any discount.

"Ismi Ian," he went on valiantly. My name is Ian.

"Salah!" from the driver, clapping the air jubilantly. To the music. Or the sound of Arabic from a newcomer's lips. Who knew? The car slowed to a snail's pace, the incline severe. What did it matter if there was dancing in this petite, shuddering shell of a deathtrap? "Saladin."

Ian assumed this was his name - Salah or Saladin.

Most Muslim men seemed to have a shortened name, and wanted you to use it. It was like Ian's saying 'hello' and meaning a litany, always with a view to comprehending more, offering goodwill, protecting himself.

Hello, 'ello, 'ello.

Ian nodded gratefully - wishing Salah would steer with at least one hand on the wheel, rather than a knee. The guy more engrossed by his rear-view mirror than traffic overtaking on this potholed road - or the westerner's drivel. Not every passenger tried disco seated.

Salah turned the volume higher, and grinned - revealing his stained teeth. Hazza could belly dance to Umm Kolthum, Madonna, the Backstreet Boys or Sting. You name it the lad had a move. Salah was ecstatic, applauding - and began to croon with the radio, urging Ian to move his legs, do something. Keep the backseat jigger company.

Ian wound down the window, and began tapping on the door. Music streamed out amidst a cacophony of horns, revving engines. It was Friday evening in Damascus. To Hazza this meant not midday prayers but sleep all day - in preparation for the night spent dancing at Backdoor with his girlfriend, Fernanda, a seventeen-year-old Lebanese-Brazilian. Orphan, model. She adored Hazza's flamboyant ways. The couple enjoyed free entry to the uptown club - drinks - and were the spectacle from midnight until dawn.

Losing themselves in lightshow.

Hazza and Fernanda invited Ian every Friday. He declined. Tonight - his last - the party-pooper accepted. There was nothing to lose. His flight was 6 a.m. Why not stay awake - partying at Damascus's hottest scene?

Grand holiday of each week. 'Friday-the-Smiley,' Hazza called it - winking his wink, snapping his fingers. Families picnicking on traffic islands, on the slopes of Mount Qassioun, along roadsides - to flee the pollution and heat of the lower city.

Total celebration - no inch given.

Three months before, Ian shunned these locales. Any crowds, in fact, nightspots, traffic jams - wherever he felt closed-in. Public holidays, Friday noon prayers - all occasions to avoid. Travel advisories said so. You remained in your digs.

Ian's imagination was fuelled by prospects: of abduction, Syrian spies, torture, decapitation, the odd suicide bomber. He never wanted to attract attention.

Not surprisingly, the Quebec firm paid him handsomely for his drawings. An assignment too unpredictable for most-with Iraq a stone's throw away. Baghdad. You did not risk life and limb for ornamental Arab porticos.

Ian decided otherwise.

On edge still, though - in these closing hours, he tried to savour the unpredictable. No-one meant any harm. Quite the opposite. Why could he not feel that?

He did need more time.

"We travel up there!" Hazza shouted, pointing to a string of lights in the distance-as Salah swerved once more to avoid a trench.

"Better than the Palmyra oasis?"

No reply.

Ian glanced over his shoulder.

It was another of those instances when Hazza's soul unexpectedly shone through. There was sadness in his eyes, apprehension-he squirmed and clicked all the harder to Fairuz.

Ian should not have mentioned last week's trip east to the second century ruins of Palmyra, and the desert camel ride, the stay with a Bedouin family - near Iraq's border.

It had affected them both, brought their friendship closer.

On the day their four-camel convoy lit out past the citadel and east toward the Euphrates river, Hazza recited a history of the palm-fringed city - the Temple of Bel, the legendary Queen Zenobia of ancient Roman times.

In a downtown Palmyra hotel, he once offered 'Queen Zenobia's telephone,' so he told Ian, to a Japanese tourist who irritated him. The man of course wished to purchase it immediately, as he had a flying carpet from an equally canny Syrian in the Hamidiyyah souq in Damascus.

"Her majesty would dial from here?" the fellow from Tokyo repeated, stroking the third century receiver. "To Emperor Aurelian?"

"Flat rates to Rome."

Hazza professed little time for ignorant visitors. Ian himself barely escaped the noose of Hazza's insistence that foreigners be knowledgeable, plugged in minimally.

Under a starlit sky, before a black goat-hair tent, Hazza and the Bedouin family patiently taught him Arabic numerals.

"Ashara, tis'a, tamanya," they said in chorus, as though this was the finest schooling ever.

Ten, nine, eight, he repeated in their tongue.

Hazza loved it - and the sweet tea, and cakes. Sleeping under heaven with his western friend.

"Bee's knees, willy woofter, cat's whisker." In return, Ian contributed to the Syrian love of rhyme and catchy phrases. "See you later, alligator," he had them saying.

All next afternoon - as the camels swayed under a blistering sun - Ian rehearsed his class of the previous night. Hazza correcting against the wind-borne sand.

"Saba'a, sitta," seven, six.

"Bee's knees, Ian!" he sang out. "A gold star for Ali Baba!"

On the return to Palmyra - and when he was not humming Madonna songs or reciting poetry by Al-Mutanabbi, Hazza reminded him of the five pillars of Islam, which in fact Ian never knew - and named the five prayer times in a day.

Much was about numbers, it seemed, in Hazza's world. Ian was instructed - wiggled his sunburnt toes and fingers to the count.

He left the desert vowing to return, stay longer. Soon.

"Do you remember your numbers?" Hazza yelled above the music of the taxi.

They were nearing the crest of Mount Qassioun - Damascus below, its green minarets like missile quills.

"Five, four, three, two, one, and all that?" replied Ian. "You learned them backwards as well, right?"

Not that he should have been surprised by Hazza's enthusiasm or cunning. The wisdom, jokes.

Not anymore.

This boy was proud and accomplished. An Alawite. His minority sect now dominated Syria's sixteen million Sunnis. The rulers were Hazza's tribe based in the hills around coastal Lattakia where his family lived.

Hazza was Syria, as much as he wished escape. He wanted you to see. To understand, and love - as fervently as he.

Intensely, holding nothing back.

"Khamsa, arba'a, talaata'' Ian piped up. Five, four, three. "Itnayn, wahid."

Strains of desert Bedouin, not easily forgotten.

Then another call on Hazza's mobile.

Last of the evening - thereafter, he shut his phone down, ordered the cab to Backdoor. Like Mohammed the Prophet, Hazza could not face Damascus in all its splendour. Not tonight. Like Ian he was used to goodbyes - but this particular one caught him off guard.

Hazza would miss his friend too much.

"For you," he said, tossing the Canadian his cell.

It was Jessica.

"Hi, honey…"

Minutes after, the cab lurched to avoid yet another pit in the summit road.

This time it dislodged a carton of tissues, somehow affixed to the roof above Salah's dashboard.

It tumbled onto Ian's arm.

The sharp corner jabbed him, knocking the mobile from his hand.

Startled, Ian let out a cry, slamming against the door as though punched.

"Ian? Ian!" screamed the cell voice. "What's happening?"

Hazza wrenched the cabbie's shoulder so that he would brake.

"What is it?" the phone continued. "Speak to me! Are you there?"

Ian scrambled under the seat to reach his wife - "It's okay, Jessica. Everything's fine. We're in a taxi ... I dropped Hazza's cell ...."

The driver's steering wobbled for a few metres before the car resumed its course. Yet Salah seemed shaken by the hullabaloo - and pulled over.

"The guide I told you about ... yes, unbelievable ..."

Hazza climbed out for a leak. Wandered the kerbside-strolled through cedar trees, plucked a flower from the verge.

As he regained the cab, Ian handed him the phone. "Jessica wants to say hi."

He listened good humouredly to Ian's wife, frowning, smiling by turns. Hazza was mute for once - as if someone had uttered 'London.'

"Your husband was attacked by a Kleenex box, Mrs. Jessica," he said eventually, as though it needed explaining.

Hazza loved gags.

Salah lit two Marlboros and offered one to Ian who was studying the heart-shaped plastic holder above his head.

"Yes," Hazza giggled, pulling a face. He kicked Salah's elbow to turn the tune louder. "Travel is so treacherous in Arabia."

The driver fumbled for the radio.

"No Mrs. Jessica, he will dance all night," Hazza went on, twisting a jasmine petal in his hand, now crying into the silver mouthpiece.

Although Ian did not smoke, he took his cigarette and blew rings into the glass.

"Sifr," he told Salah wistfully, pointing to the circles. "Itnayn, wahid, sifr."

Hovering one upon another - two, one, zero.

"And come morning I will kill him!" from the back seat.

So that everyone might hear.