1

In anatomical terms, if Beirut is the heart of Lebanon, then Hamra is its vena cava – more precisely, the superior vena cava, which is the vein that carries the deoxygenated blood from your head and the rest of your upper body back to your heart.

2

Suppose I was a surgeon and Lebanon was the anesthetized body of a beautiful woman spread on a cold operating table, unconscious and at the mercy of infinite impossibilities.

On the strength of the absurd, I’d let you in the operating room, help you put on a disposable face mask to filter your cheap whisky breath, and I’d cut her open right in front of you to show you Hamra Street.

“There’s a pair of surgical gloves on the instrument table,” I’d tell you, inviting you to put them on.

I’d let you touch the still-beating heart of the sleeping beauty, and then, pointing at the vein with the scalpel I used to cut her open, I’d show you Hamra Street, the superior vena cava.

“Hamra Street is the most vital vein of Lebanon,” I’d explain to you as if you were my intern. “When it fails, the death of Lebanon becomes inevitable.”

Hearing this, you’d remove your face mask, pull out a cigarette pack from your pocket, and light a cigarette. Smoking meditatively, you’d devour the sleeping beauty with your eyes and then look at me and smile.

“Thanks for letting me in,” you’d say. “How about a smoke?”

“Yes, please.”

We always wanted to steal the heart of the same woman together, and that’s what we’d be doing then. You’d be loving it.

“Just look at how beautiful she is,” one of us would say.

We’d lock the door of the operating room, we’d calmly smoke our cigarettes, and then we’d cut her heart out.

“Open this door right now!” some old, balding doctor would shout from the other side. He’d be surrounded by a flock of mildly fuckable nurses as well as unfuckable ones. “I will fuck your mothers’ pussies,” the balding doctor would proceed to shout in Arabic. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Open this door! You’ll go to prison for this.”

But we’d never answer. We’d laugh. We’d play catch with the woman’s heart until our arrest.

3

The bartender places the pints on the bar top in front of us and goes to get us some nuts.

He breaks my reverie. The operating room and the anesthetized body of the beautiful woman evaporate. I’m back in the real world, having a conversation with you.

“There was a time when we could befriend the bartenders,” you say. “This was back when we were younger, and they were the same age as us.”

“But now,” I stretch your statement, “they’re much younger than us, and having conversations with them, even small talk, is a chore.”

“It’s like everything around us has been replaced, and only we stayed the same,” you say.

I quote from Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons: “As it is, I, like yourself, am on the shelf.”

You notice I’m citing from the book we read aloud in your room the other day, so you welcome it with a hearty laugh, and you continue what I started. You say, “Yes, brother. Clearly, it is time that we ordered our tombstones and folded our hands upon our breasts.”

We are both bearded thirty-six-year-olds with yellowed teeth acting like we’re twenty-six.

We empty many pints and fill our beer bellies with beer.

We eat a lot of nuts, and we don’t wash our hands.

While we’re paying the bill, you quote from Fathers and Sons again: “Children, is love an empirical sentiment?”

You don’t just say it; no, you perform it: “Children, is love an empirical sentiment?”

“What?” the bartender asks.

“Nothing,” you say. “I was quoting from a book.”

We’re drunk. We’re very drunk.

In an infinite universe, our planet circles around the only sun whose warmth we’ve ever felt.

The rest of the stars are fantasies. Some of them are dead dreams. They’ve been dead for millions of years. They are nothing but glimmers from the past.

I can feel the world spinning.

Blurry vision.

Murky thoughts.

“You’re good?” you ask. “Are you okay, my man?”

“I’ll be fine,” I say. “I shouldn’t have had that last pint.”

We walk. We talk. A strong wind blows, and it’s suddenly much colder now. The only sun whose warmth we’ve ever felt has sunk into the sea. And the moon is there, watching us zigzag our way to your car. It’s an ugly sedan from the 90s, and you’ll be driving it drunk like you always do.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” I say, and I make the sign of the cross before I get in the car.

I’m an atheist, but you’re a horrible driver. When you drive, it’s God who gets us home safe.

4

“Park here,” I say. “I need to puke.”

“You’re growing old,” you say.

“I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

You make a U-turn somewhere and park on the side of the road.

The corniche.

I can hear the waves of our beloved Mediterranean Sea crashing. The wind keeps getting stronger. The moon and the stars are gone. Where did they go? It’s raining hard, and I’m puking. This is the worst part of the night, but I embrace it like a brave stoic.

On my knees, under a palm tree, I puke half of the pints I’ve drunk while you wait for me in the car.

When I get back in the car, I’m soaking wet.

I look like a wet street dog.

“Do you want me to drive you home, or do you want to grab a shawarma?” you ask.

I say, “Shawarma.”

5

“Park here,” I say. “I need to puke.”

I puke into a trash can.

I think I’m dying.

I don’t know where I am, but it feels like I’m a blood cell passing through the superior vena cava, flowing towards the heart.

There was a time when I wanted to be a surgeon. There was a time when our dreams pulled us towards them like magnets, and our spirits surrendered to their intoxicating gravitational pull. We thought that we were being pulled towards them, that our happiness was inevitable, that it was only a matter of time. Our dreams were mistaken for our fates.

“Let me take you home,” you say.

“Fuck you,” I say. “Let’s grab a beer.”

You drive me home instead, and I wake up the next day with a hangover to live the life I never planned for.