Tag: Hamra

The Perfumery

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There was once a perfumery on Hamra Street called Reeha.

Every morning, the owner of the perfumery, a middle-aged man with broad shoulders named Mahmoud El Rashed, and his employee, a middle-aged woman who had long lost her femininity named Tania Boutros, drank coffee in paper cups and smoked cigarettes on the sidewalk in front of the shop.

Other shop owners and salespeople occasionally joined them for small talk; most of the time, however, there would be just the two of them, Mahmoud and Tania, enjoying a form of silence disguised as a conversation.

If a passerby ever chose to listen in, he would think that the two were dynamically engaged in the conversation they were having. What wouldn’t cross his mind, however, is this: Mahmoud and Tania had the exact same conversation every morning for over twenty years. They spoke without thinking and with little awareness of what really came out of their mouths. They were like two actors rehearsing a boring dialogue after a night of heavy drinking. They performed it quite well, but the meaning of their dialogue was overworked and long exhausted. It meant absolutely nothing to them. Their words had become nothing but sound, mantras that were part of the noise of the city, no different than the chirping of the birds and the begging of the beggars. As they spoke mechanically, they traveled freely in their own minds. They were there, but they weren’t there.

“The weather’s not so bad today,” one of them would always say.

“Yes,” the other would agree, “and let’s hope it will get even better tomorrow.”

“Did you see the news last night?” Tania would always ask when she was halfway through her coffee.

“Why would I watch the news?” Mahmoud would answer. “The news has been the same since 1991. Only the reporters have changed.”

Lighting his third and last cigarette before the start of his workday, Mahmoud would ask, “Remind me, Tania, how many perfume bottles did we sell yesterday?”

And Tania would smile and say something like, “Ya Mahmoud. Wallah, the number’s so small that it’s not worth mentioning.”

But this morning was a little different than all preceding mornings. Just a little different. Before they went in, Tania delivered – or, rather, tried her best to deliver –  several jokes she had come across online the night before. This was new. But unfortunately for her, none of the jokes made Mahmoud laugh. In fact, it was so out of their morning routine script that Mahmoud did not know how to react.

“Hamra is dying,” Mahmoud said after a pause. “It has been dying for more than a decade now.”

“Da,” Tania responded.

“What’s that?” Mahmoud asked.

“Da means yes in Russian,” Tania said.

“Do you speak Russian now?” Mahmoud asked.

“No, I only know this word,” Tania said. “Da.”

The Vena Cava

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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.

The Business Consultant’s Downtime

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The devil stole the sun from the sky to let the stars shine like pupils mesmerized by fire. The thin, crescent moon glowed like a radioactive cat’s scratch, like a twisted smile slyly mocking humanity.

Kaspar Kasparian, a clean-shaven business consultant in his mid-thirties with one ear bigger than the other and a nose like an eagle’s beak, left the office around 9:00 PM but decided not to head home.

He had had a long day drafting, editing, reviewing, and modifying all sorts of reports and presentations. He had survived multiple conference calls and a one-on-one with his boss. Then, he had sunk deep into a heated argument with one of his colleagues, and he couldn’t swim back out of it. In the end, they agreed to disagree, and the problem was left unsolved.

As the elevator gently descended to the underground floor, where his car was parked, his psychological state, as if symbolically synchronized with the elevator’s movement, deteriorated by degrees until he reached the lowest point he could possibly reach.

He was dog-tired and burned out.

His brain was fried.

He needed a drink to unwind, a second drink to drown his gloomy thoughts, and a third drink to start smiling like a man who did not hate his job or his life.

In the dimly lit parking lot of the office building, he sat in his sports car for a few minutes, took deep breaths, and thought about how unsatisfyingly mildly successful he had become in the business world by sacrificing almost everything else. He had no family life, no hobbies, no pets, and basically no reason to drive back home.  

“God, I’m so tired,” he said, and the longest sigh followed.

After a moment of silence, sitting in the driver’s seat, he removed his navy blazer, connected his phone to the car’s radio, and played the song that could as well have been the soundtrack of his life. The song was “A Hard Day’s Night” by the Beatles.

In the rear-view mirror, he saw his own ugly face smile at him. It was a forced smile, but he had read somewhere that if you smiled enough when you were down, your mood would eventually change, and you would lighten up.

“Next week, you’ll be in Dubai, and the week after it, you’ll be in Riyadh. That should change your mood a little bit, won’t it?” he said to his reflection, but he knew that was a lie.

“I can’t go home; I must go home,” he said.

“I won’t go home,” he said.

Then, he messaged one of his friends to tell him that he planned to have a drink somewhere in Hamra.

When he got no response, he sent a follow-up text that said: “I need to get hammered tonight.”

And he waited for a few minutes and a few seconds more, staring blankly at the screen of his mobile phone. His friend didn’t respond, and the message was left unread.

He finally tried to call him, but the ringing stopped eventually, and on his phone screen, he read, “No Answer.”

So, Kaspar drove to Hamra to implement a Plan B he always had – the plan to drink alone. It was the worst of all plans, he knew. But it was also the only plan that could unfold independently from the will of the world. It was the only plan he could always count on.

“I don’t care if it’s a Tuesday night,” he said. “If I feel like getting wasted, I’ll get wasted. I’ve done it a thousand times before.”

The Beatles song played on repeat until he reached Hamra.

He parked on the main street, walked down a narrower street, and turned left to get to the bars. But before he got to them, he came by an old man who smiled at him and said hello.

The man was ugly, even uglier than Kaspar, who was used to being the ugliest person wherever he went. Kaspar knew what it meant to be ugly, and this man positively met the criteria of ugliness. His face was indescribably cursed with asymmetries. And the weathered human skin he seemed to wear was like a thin layer that masked an underlying monstrosity.

There was an uncanny familiarity in the man’s face, but he couldn’t remember if they had ever met. He was an old man with many lines on his forehead. He had one ear bigger than the other and an aquiline nose. He wore a thin goatee, and he had a scar on one of his cheeks. How could one forget such a distinctive face?

“Do I know you?” Kaspar asked.

“It’s likely that you don’t, but I think you want to get to know me,” the man said, extending his right hand and inviting Kaspar to shake hands.

Kaspar was about to shake the man’s hand when he said, “Oh, I’m sorry. What happened to your hand? That must be very painful.”

“It’s okay,” the man said. “As you can see, I’ve burned both of my hands. Look. But they don’t hurt at all.”

“I don’t know, man. Those look like really bad burns. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” said the man with a smile, “I am okay. You can say I was playing with fire. And we all know what happens when you play with fire, don’t we?”

The man invited Kaspar to shake hands again.

“Sorry,” Kaspar said as they shook hands, “but I didn’t get your name.”

“That’s because I didn’t give you my name,” the man said, “But I’m sure you’ll know it soon enough. Everybody knows my name. Although they may not all know me in person, almost everybody has heard stories about me. Most of them don’t wish to meet me because of my reputation, and that’s so sad, really. In fact, that’s why I am alone and looking for a drinking buddy right now. That’s how desperate I am. Uh, are you having a drink? Um, I see you’re walking towards the pubs. Please, let me invite you for a drink. I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to do so.”

“You know, strangely familiar stranger, I don’t know why, but you remind me a little of myself, and my drinking buddy has let me down tonight, so you and I are alone, and therefore I certainly accept your offer,” Kaspar said, “You can buy me a drink as long as you promise that the second round is on me.”

“And the third round will be on me,” the man with the burned hands, the strangely familiar stranger, said.

“I already like you,” Kaspar said. “That’s why the fourth one will be on me.”

“Let’s stop counting, then, and get to drinking,” the man said.

Kaspar laughed. The man with the burned hands, the strangely familiar stranger, laughed also. Kaspar intuitively sensed subtle notes of evil in the man’s laughter. But he assumed that was probably so because of all the cigarettes the strangely familiar stranger clearly smoked. The man smelled like fire. He clearly worked with fire, too.

Like old friends, they walked side by side and headed to a nearby bar to have their first drink.

They briefly talked about sports, politics, and the economy of the country.

They ordered a second round of drinks.

Then, the old man fascinated Kaspar with magic tricks. He made coins disappear and reappear. He emptied a shot of Jägermeister by staring at it. Carrot sticks came out of his ears. And he pulled a pigeon out of an empty beer bottle.

“Where did you learn all that?” Kaspar asked.

“I spend a lot of time alone,” the old man said. “And it is hell when I’m alone with myself, especially when my mind begins to engage in a dialogue with itself. So, I do everything I can to keep that internal dialogue at bay. But more of that maybe later. Look here, now, my young friend. This will be the last magic trick you’ll see tonight.”

The last magic trick the old man performed was, Kaspar thought, the absolute opposite of a miracle. The old man ordered a glass of red wine, and then, after asking Kaspar if he was ready to get his socks blown off, he turned the wine into water right in front of Kaspar’s eyes.

Kaspar’s jaw dropped.

The old man even let Kaspar taste the water that had now replaced the wine in the glass, and, yes, it tasted like water.

“How did you do that?” Kaspar asked.

“It’s magic,” the man smiled proudly.

“I would have said it’s a miracle,” Kaspar said. “But I was just thinking that what you did right now is the opposite of the miracle. You know? For a moment, it felt like you were undoing the first miracle of Jesus.”

When each of them finished their fourth drink, the old man proposed tequila shots. Kaspar did not object.

“Two silver tequila shots, please. And add pepper to the salt you’ll use on the rim of the shot,” the old man said to the bartender.

“Black pepper?” the bartender asked.

“Yes, black pepper, s’il te plaît.”

 When the tequila shots came, they drank them, and the man looked into Kaspar’s red eyes and said: “Now it’s time for you to remember my name.”

“Now?” Kaspar asked, laughing. “I remembered your name right after we had our second round of drinks. I’ve seen you a thousand times before. I know you very well, and I know that you come to Hamra every night, and you come to this bar because the servers aren’t talkative and you don’t like light.”

“Wait a minute,” the man shouted. “There must be a mistake. I don’t drink with the same people often. Please, tell me, what do you think my name is?”

“I will tell you your name if you have three more shots with me,” Kaspar said.

“Okay,” the man said.

When each of them downed their three new tequila shots, they looked into each other’s eyes and burst into laughter.

By now, they were both extremely intoxicated. Their eyes were red, and they were chain-smoking cigarettes.

“Before I tell you your name, you’ll have to tell me my name,” Kaspar said.

“That’s not a problem,” the old man said. “Your name is Kaspar.”

“Kaspar? That’s not my name,” Kaspar said playfully and laughed loudly.

“I know it is,” the old man said.

“No, it isn’t,” Kaspar said. “I’ll tell you what. We have another shot, and I’ll tell you my name, and then I’ll tell you your name.”

And they both had another shot, this time absinthe.

“I want names!” the old man shouted.

At this point, they were both absolutely wasted.

“Alright,” Kaspar said, “you were correct. My name is Kaspar.”

“Why did you lie?” the man asked.

“Because I wanted to have another shot,” Kaspar said.

They both burst into laughter again. Tears ran down their cheeks. They were having a blast.

“Okay,” the man said. “That’s enough. Now, tell me what my name is.”

“How can I forget who you are? Actually, now that I’m wasted, I remember all of the times we got drunk together. You see, when I get drunk, all my drunken memories become accessible to me again. My drunk self remembers everything my drunk self does or ever did. My sober self, however, is absolutely clueless. Ha-ha. You know? I don’t know the science behind it or how to explain it,” Kaspar said. “Now let me tell you who you are. You are the devil. You come here every night after you steal the day’s sun. That’s why your hands are always burned.”

“What? “Who told you? How do you know that I’m the devil?” The old man, who was the devil, cried.

“I know you because I remember you,” Kaspar said and hiccupped.

“How come I don’t remember you, then?” the devil said.

“That’s because I get you drunk every time you pick me, and I make you drink until you black out. And I do this because I like you much more than the devil before you, and I don’t want to disappoint you. You are such a great drinking buddy. Unfortunately for you, you don’t start remembering things when you get drunk like I do. So, every time you black out, you completely forget the night we spent together. And this isn’t the first time that I have explained this to you, by the way. We start off the night not recognizing one another, and then I start remembering everything after a few drinks, but you don’t. But the magic tricks you performed tonight were new to me. They really were. So, I was really impressed by them.”

“Hmm,” the devil said. “Uh,” he added, and he hiccupped.

 “Also,” Kaspar said, “I know you’re here to snatch a couple of souls before you go to bed.  Regrettably, I can’t sell my soul to you, even though we’ve tried to make the transaction work before. You can’t have my soul because it’s owned by the corporate world.”

Hearing this, the old devil nodded and said, “What you said was tear-jerking, my good friend. I really want to cry right now, but it would ruin my reputation. But well done! Well done! I am the luckiest devil in the world. No one has ever liked my companionship before. You don’t know how much this means to me!”

Then, he called the bartender and ordered three more shots for each of them.

“Let’s end this night properly,” the devil said. “And see you again when I see you.”