MELTING POT

At small tables against walls plastered with photo murals of cedar trees, raging rivers and pyramids, men sip demitasses of strong, sweet, thick coffee. Smoke, drawn in long, slow drags from exquisitely designed water pipes, swirls through the dark room. But if you think this is Casablanca, then you are misinformed.

Long before the black-turtleneck crowd discovered espresso, coffeehouses were social centers for the Middle Eastern community. “We provide a way to bring people together,” says John Sodir, owner of the Cedar Club on Cahuenga Boulevard. “Cedar is just like the places that we used to go to in our home country.”

Most coffeehouses are for members only; women are not encouraged to join, but they are admitted. “It’s a modern world, what can we do?” laments Issac of the Egyptian Club, on Hollywood Boulevard.

During the Persian Gulf War, there were occasional bomb threats and angry phone calls. “For a while, the war almost closed everything,” Sodir says. “We’re Lebanese over here. Other clubs are Arabic, Egyptian, Armenian, but we’re all affected. A lot of people were scared to come out, because some Americans think that everybody from the Middle East is the same.”

Now, on a weekend night, the Cedar is packed with musicians, businessmen, professors, mechanics--they all have a drink or a smoke, play cards, backgammon or billiards and talk into the wee hours of the morning.

An elderly man in a rumpled suit sits down and joins his pals in a game of poker. “He comes here almost every day,” Sodir says. “If not for places like this, he’d probably be home alone, watching TV. That’s what we’re here for because you can get really alienated in L.A.”