The hours before my first encounter with Mr. Ibrahim stand out in vivid contrast with what was to follow, if nothing else, for their relative peace and coherence.

I'd arrived in Beirut the previous afternoon, but I hadn't set off to explore the city until that morning. Striking out from my hotel, I strolled past the impressively redeveloped central business district, the Roman ruins of Cardo Maximus and the idyllic campus of the American University.

The most intriguing thing I discovered that morning, however, was the stark evidence of the civil war that had once raged through the city. An abundance of bullet-scarred buildings stood in bleak contrast to the ongoing renovations, particularly along the Green Line that once separated Muslim West Beirut from the Christian East.

I'm not sure why these war remnants proved so fascinating for me. In a way, I don't even like war tourism, as it reduces certain places -- Sarajevo, Belfast, Phnom Penh -- into dull, de facto thrill destinations, relevant only for the visceral buzz of recent history. Here, travelers photograph soldiers and barbed wire with the same blind compulsion that inspires them to photograph the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

In Beirut, which has been open to American travelers only since 1997, I found it difficult not to be a war tourist. The battered buildings of the old buffer zone were a grim reminder of not just the Muslim-Christian discord that symbolized the war but the international factors that started and prolonged it: French favoritism, American geopolitics, Syrian opportunism, Israeli brutality, Iranian radicalism and Palestinian rage. In some places, bullet holes in buildings were so common that they seemed a part of the architecture -- a congenital concrete defect that just happened to afflict the neighborhood.

By its very definition, war tourism is a fickle activity. Stunned as I was by the evidence of war, sobered as I was by its devastation, I left the Green Line that evening looking for a place to party.

Using directions copied from a month-old e-mail, I began to walk in search of the Hole in the Wall pub. Less than an hour later, I found myself in the ruthlessly gung-ho custody of a man who called himself Mr. Ibrahim.

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When I first got into Mr. Ibrahim's Mercedes, I thought maybe he was one of those rich guys who run with showgirls and compulsively hand out boxes of Cuban cigars and bottles of Hennessy. As it turned out, he was a celibate teetotaler who vetoed our trip to the Hole in the Wall the moment I mentioned that the place served alcohol.

We ended up driving to the Weekland, an upscale buffet restaurant that had been booked that night for a Sunni Muslim wedding. Unfazed by our lack of a reservation, Mr. Ibrahim bullied his way into getting us a table overlooking the courtyard fountain. As Mr. Ibrahim instructed Abdul the bodyguard to fill my plate with lamb, kibbe and hummus from the buffet, I took in my surroundings. Down in the courtyard, an immaculately dressed bride and groom cut their cake and posed for a photographer. Across the restaurant, groups of relatives watched this unfold live on a big-screen TV. At the tables around us, tuxedo-clad Sunni men smoked cigarettes and squinted at their cellphones. The Sunni women chatted among themselves, looking refined and downright sexy in their designer dresses and silken headscarves.

The Lebanese food was fantastic, and Mr. Ibrahim was thrilled that I ate it with such enthusiasm.

"Do you like my food?" he asked me, grinning like a madman.

"It's great," I said between mouthfuls.

"How about my city? Did you see my city today?"

"Yes, I walked around some this afternoon."

"What did you see? Did you see the Hard Rock Cafe?"

"No, but I visited the American Univ --"

"That was a trick question: Beirut has two Hard Rock Cafes!"

"Wow. Well, I haven't seen either one of them yet, but ..."

"Two Hard Rock Cafes!" Mr. Ibrahim hollered happily.

"Right, but today I went walking along the old Green Line and ..."

"I'm sorry, where did you say?"

"The Green Line. I went walking ..."

"The Green Line is not for tourists!" Mr. Ibrahim yelled, shaking his finger at me. For the first time since I'd met him, Mr. Ibrahim was not grinning, and this gave me a chill.

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