GG Hassan

Layla Hassan ran her family's guesthouse near Amman's old downtown for nearly forty years, feeding pilgrims, backpackers and long-haul lorry drivers, and learned tavla in its courtyard by beating every man on her street. She raised four children between the kitchen and the board, and swears the game taught them patience better than she ever could. She has never counted a pip. Not once, in sixty years, and she is unrepentant: she looks at the board, she knows who is ahead, and nobody has yet shown her the evening where the arithmetic would have changed her mind. Her checker play is quick and unsentimental. She calls her opponents my child throughout, warmly, and she means it, and she is taking them apart while she says it. In DMP there is nothing to count at all, and she treats that as the game finally agreeing with her.