Somersault Magazine Vol. 1/Issue 1

Beirut. They all knew it was coming -- it was palpable, almost. But they weren’t holding their breath. They were doing everything, buying anything, while they had a chance.

And it was like breathing to them.” This sprawling, hyperventilating city.

When the war comes, it might look like this: Black smoke billows above the silo towers at the port. The security guards downtown look west warily, shading their eyes, talking hurriedly into their radios, the soldiers standing next to them regarding them cautiously. People step back from the Roman ruins, step out from the churches, step out from the latticed entryways of the Mohammad al-Amin Mosque -- the Hariri Mosque -- and stand in the shade of its turquoise dome. They glance at each other while watching the smoke plume in the distance above the statue at Martyrs’ Square. Sirens scream past. Somewhere, in the south of the city, the Shi’a are marching, a Hezbollah rally to mourn a beloved cleric.

The people gathering on the sidewalk imagine they can almost hear them chanting. If this is it, they wonder, will I take a side, and will it be different from that of the person next to me, staring at the same column of smoke with the same fears, the same doubts? Someone, a tourist, asks a guard with a radio what is happening -- he responds, but the person does not understand, even if he spoke the same language there would be no way to understand. How could anyone, unless they had watched this before, had lived through the war years, all those years ago? The smoke billows higher.

The whole city will burn, someday.

But it is not today. Today there is a fire on a freight ship docked in the port, and that is all. Nothing more, nothing less, and the city does not stop, it will not stop. It wills itself not to stop.

At Pizza Hut, there are only two sizes of pizza -- medium and large. They are made with beef pepperoni, ham being haram in Islam.

Two blocks west on Bliss Street, past a Burger King, a McDonald’s, a Domino’s Pizza, a Krispy Kreme, and a Dunkin’ Donuts, at Hardee’s, there is a similar conspicuous absence of meats that are not halal. There is no bacon on the burgers, no burgers with onion rings and barbecue sauce. The red packet that comes with the chicken sandwich is Americana brand, labeled “Tomato Ketchup” in English and approximated in Arabic. Arabic, though, does not have the letter “p,” nor the “ch” sound. Transliterated back into English, the Arabic spelling would sound more like “kaatshub.”

The taste of beef pepperoni, the word “ketchup” translated and returned as something changed and alien – this is the country in sum, a place at once familiar and foreign.

It is late when Ahmad suggests the ferris wheel again.

December 2012 ♦ 28