Lebanon is the most confusing country I’ve ever felt completely at ease in.

Thanks to its resourceful and welcoming citizens, I would personally stop shy of calling it a “failed state.”

But it does sit in that uncomfortable travel space between dysfunction and deep allure.

Electricity is intermittent, but you can stand among ruins older than most countries.

Many border regions are off‑limits, but you can move freely through a society that still knows how to show strangers a great time.

And the government barely functions, but the country itself keeps ticking over, never quite stalling.

I wouldn't write a phrase as glib as “Lebanon is a country full of contradictions,” but my trip through Beirut Airport on the way to fly home made me consider it.

Beirut charm

It’s easy to forget that not everyone in Lebanon is an Arab.

But Tariq, the concierge of my hotel in Beirut for the night, is an Arab, and has a full line in Arab hospitality.

Thomas (my name) is his favourite.

He doesn't have a son, but when he does, he's going to call him Thomas.

He has three daughters, called Thomasine, Thomasina, and Tamara.

And he's just "upgraded" me and my girlfriend, free of charge, to the exact room we saw and booked back in the UK through Booking.com.

When I tip him the last of my worthless Lebanese pounds on checkout, he looks at me like I've just slapped his cat.

Not that cats have a great life in Lebanon. There's a dead one, stiff and grinning on the kerb outside. We got to know it quite well as we came and went.

When Tariq is not checking guests in and out of the Hotel Cavalier, he's a kickboxing referee for tournaments across the Levant, so I really don't want to offend him.

He seems more intimidating than Hezbollah has been during our entire trip.

But his stern face melts into liquid charm, and for my minor insult, he even puts our bags into the taxi he books for us back to the airport and waves us off.

I’ve spent the last of my US dollars—a tip that would have been worth a great deal more to Tariq than what I gave him—on two fat Beiruti cigars to smoke with my friend when I get home.

Wedding guests ready to escape

Rafic Hariri International Airport is just south of Beirut, and the UK Government’s travel advice doesn’t recommend lingering in the intervening suburbs.

Our taxi whizzes past these more dismal, unrepaired areas and deposits us right outside Departures, bringing an end to our visit to this greatly troubled but stunning country.

We’ve travelled to Lebanon to attend a wedding, and we link up with some of the other guests while queuing to pass through security.

Frankly, they look very pleased to be leaving.

Unlike me and my partner, they are old enough to remember the awful news stories pouring out of Lebanon during its long and ghastly civil war, and they can't seem to move past that perception of the country.

Their relief shows in the silly but very funny things they keep muttering. I have to contain a howl when the Mother of the Bride comes out with the brilliant axiom, “there’s only so much yoghurt you can eat!”

Past security, I spend my emergency dollars (sorry, Tariq, you nearly qualified) on a mass-produced cezve and pay well over the odds for it.

Departures. A geopolitical crossword

The departures board features destinations that you don’t usually see.

My favourites are:

1. Amman
2. Baghdad
3. Basra

In fact, there’s a man on our flight with a carrier bag from “Basra Gift Shop.”

When I see it, my mind is flooded with too many cheap jokes about what might be inside to feel proud of.

But many a true word is spoken (or thought) in jest, as the saying goes, and I’m not the only person interested in the bag.

Iraq and Syria are next door to Lebanon. Neither of those countries has direct flights to Europe, but Lebanon does.

But history hasn't helped Lebanon's reputation.

One of the 9/11 hijackers was Lebanese.

And the coward who knifed Salman Rushdie in the eye, Hadi Matar, was a Lebanese citizen.

A glimpse into Beirut Airport's security

Radicalism isn't common among the Lebanese, however, and to be clear: my girlfriend and I have felt very safe and welcome during our trip.

We would encourage anyone with an interest in Levantine food, ancient civilisations, natural beauty, modern history, or mountaineering, to visit.

But Lebanon lies on the edge of a region drenched in conflict, and the chances of bad actors passing through the airport are reasonable.

That’s why there is a second security desk at many of the gates, the staff of which take a keen interest in bags they don’t like the look of.

To kill time before my flight, I walk around the terminal building. There are signs warning against stealing archaeological artifacts—a parting reminder that I am leaving one of the oldest cradles of civilisation behind.

Milton Keynes, this is not.

There are also magnificent before-and-after photos demonstrating the immensely successful efforts to rebuild large areas of Lebanon after its recent wars, and get them liveable again.

Loving multiculturalism while defending autocracy

Budget constraints prevent me from sitting next to my girlfriend on the flight home. Instead, I’m sitting next to Violet, a woman comfortably past middle age who embodies contradiction.

She’s a visual arts director with a sideline in translating books. She speaks many languages, including English, French, Lebanese Arabic, and Farsi.

By many measures, she is a smart woman.

Rightfully, she is praiseworthy about how multicultural Lebanon is.

Yet she’s adamant that the Western sphere of influence is in decline (maybe it is), and she won’t hear a bad word said about Vladimir Putin or Bashar al-Assad.

I try to point out their appalling crimes, particularly those of al-Assad, who is more than likely responsible for the assassination of the popular Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri (the UN investigation into the killing had no teeth and fizzled out, so his involvement was never proven), but she won’t hear any of it.

They are gentlemen who are eternally in the right. It doesn’t seem to register that the Lebanon she enjoys wouldn’t exist if Assad had had his way.

Violet is of Iranian descent, used to live in Paris, and now lives in London. Two very decadent cities that embody the Western precepts she’s so heavily critical of (multiculturalism being a bad thing only when it exists to the left of a preferred timezone).

But she doesn’t dislike me just because I disagree with her, and I don’t dislike her.

We enjoy two “free” glasses of wine each courtesy of Middle East Airlines, and an elbow-to-elbow meal with metal cutlery—something even this plucky carrier does better than economy class British Airways.

Partying with Carlos Ghosn in exile

Violet tells me about a glitzy party she went to while she was in Lebanon, hosted by the disgraced boss of Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi Motors, Carlos Ghosn, who fled from arrest in Japan to Lebanon, allegedly concealed in a large suitcase.

Once he got himself comfortable, he founded the IXSIR winery. Their produce is delicious, and, as well as a litre of Courvoisier from duty free, I have a bottle of their red and their white in my case to enjoy with those cigars.

In the end, our fundamentally different outlook wilts the conversation, and we fall into silence.

Something about her makes me want to say goodbye when we land at Heathrow, but I hold back and so does she.

The names of the people in this story have been changed.