Muhammad Abi Samra - Beirut Noir

All was gloom until one day the clergy announced that the pope would visit the country in the month of April. The arrival of the popemobile liberated the Lebanese from their darkness and isolation.

After the failure of the tinted-window experiment, the popemobile was a revelation. Herds of popemobiles accumulated in Beirut, on streets that prided themselves on their taste, fashion, culture, and, certainly, on the availability of good food.

Wide cubes of transparent glass mounted onto the backs of small trucks dotted the traffic jams, crawled along the Corniche, through Ashrafieh, into the mountains, and beyond. Men drove with prideful smiles on their faces and women paraded their latest XXL dresses, lifting their thick ankles to model European heels. In the presence of the popemobile, one heard the Lebs sigh in awe, There must be a god! After the visit of his holiness, look how all flourishes again and how the stores are suddenly full with enthusiastic shoppers!

The blowing machines of the hairdressers never ceased their generation of money and winds, the streets glittered with stretches of painted nails and color-soaked toes. Long live the pope and his transparent, protective, mobile shrine! Christians, Muslims, and Druze were all heard say.

But summer came and the suffocating heat hit every glass cube, sizzling every trunk and dashboard. Men blasted their air-conditioning to no avail. Inside the popemobile automobile , sweat condensed like fog on holy water. The merciless sun transformed every car into a spectacular beam of light. Men had to exit their cars. They were seen carrying their women on their backs. Water from plastic bottles was poured onto feeble faces. Lebanon is burning again, a man was heard to say. If it is not the war, it is the sun.

From the tops of buildings and from the cockpits of airplanes, Beirut glittered with the reflections of thousands of glass cubicles. Oh, here it is, ladies and gentlemen, one pilot announced to his passengers, the Paris of the Middle East, the Jewel of the East ...

But, helas, brightness from afar is fire nearby. A whole nation was seen walking toward the beach in search of relief. Women divorced their most valuable shoes and dipped their painted, round, corpulent toes into the Mediterranean waters. Men rolled their large bellies and saggy breasts into the dirty sands as if they were bears, dogs, or stranded whales.

People ate and listened to their radios. In between songs, a news flash announced that a beam of light was seen continuously shining from Beirut. It was so bright that an Israeli jet plane that had been hovering over the city taking photographs was forced to land. The pilot, the news anchor said, was blinded by the power of the light.

Let’s drink to that, the people said, and let’s eat as well! Let’s forget about the cars! Let’s sell them to the hunters in the villages for a reduced price! If these cars can bring down a plane, imagine what they can do to a bird!

Afterward, the city was emptied of popemobiles, as well as signs and photographs welcoming His Holiness.

Meanwhile, the same merchant, while watching the news on CNN, saw a large, wide military car that struck him as the antidote to his past failures.

The HUMMER! he shouted. Yes, that American military car is spacious enough for a family, clear enough for every occupant to be seen, and its open top allows natural ventilation, meaning no man or women will ever be hot again.

The first Hummer that reached Beirut came straight from the desert of Iraq. After a thorough cleaning and a good coat of yellow paint, the merchant drove through town, blasting music by a kitsch singer with false teeth and, well, false everything. Two young Russian girls were hired to stand on the backseat in bikinis. They drank champagne and waved to the crowd.

Within the month, every household owned one or two Hummers. Businessmen, politicians, warlords, housewives, and mistresses drove these wide and spacious cars in the thousands. Lines of Hummers expanded into the streets of Beirut like bloated cadavers, getting stuck on sidewalks, between parked cars, and in the narrow alleys. In frustration, the politicians’ bodyguards shot in the air to make space. But, helas, nothing moved. The traffic fell into a chronic stillness, a crippling traffic jam that lasted for weeks. Pedestrians were seen crawling beneath Hummers, trying to find passage. Small-car owners were seen ducking in fear from the bullets of the Hummer owners.

But then a supernatural phenomenon happened. Ordinary people were seen growing feathers on their backs. Their feathers thickened into wings, and with every flutter they started to slowly elevate until they were floating above the traffic and into the air. Flocks of people flapped their wings and learned to fly. Only the rulers and their entourages did not grow feathers. Only the rulers remained beneath this nation of colorful citizens flying over the city, and though they shouted and waved their hands to the flying people above, no one noticed them anymore. The sky was covered with clothes, shoes, falling hats, and wings.

And as the people started to move along, above, and away, a politician and his bodyguard were seen lifting their rifles and pointing them at the sky.

Originally written in English.

Monot Street

22:56

Beirut was pulsating with life at night like a swarm of vermin in a warm grave. A panoramic stretch of dirty black and bloodred vertical patches. And there was an apparition of me.

I was strutting like an aristo dressed for the wedding of someone he would like to embarrass, swashbuckling real proper, with a promise of a night of stinking filth to be remembered by school cooks and tour guides for the ages to come.

The red patches.

I threw an eye through.

Hump, hump, hump . Vag incognita and cock incognito, ya akhi. Red red humping and black liquids drop dropped from the edges of the bed and Abdullah the client turned out to be a demon.

“Wlik kifak ya Sheikhna?” some solemnity asked me with obvious jubilation. I didn’t bother to answer. There were sharmingas and lilylilhoes yameen shemal. And yameen shemal, they were eyeing around, searching this line of insignificant whores, lined on this patch of a black wall, menstruating black chunks from their souls, and bloodred marmaladed on their lips, and old cold black eyes searching, searching this line of insignificant whores, searching for some strutting wazwaz akhou sharmouta like me who had been blessed by the hard work and earnings of his forefathers.

“Yes. You are really hard to get by... you, you, you... mythical creatures, you. Biiiiiig slimy positions. You have been crawling upward since the dawn of time. Top fuckin’ floors by now. But you don’t come down here often. No, sniff sniff and the like, you don’t come down here often. You must fuck a different breed of cunt, ya Sheikhna.”

Really, ya surprisingly eloquent whore?

3anjad, truer words had not been barfed. I’ve fucked Euro-trash and whatnot, but nothing beats homegrown cultured cunt. Yeah, les femmes de mon pays can moan in at least three languages.

I exterminated the last remaining whiteness of my cigara with one hungry cruel drag. I flicked it when I was done to a far-faraway land. The cigara’s eyes just flipped over and the trail it left behind cut the skies in two, faceup, like a kamikaze jet plane in a gravityless planet. It went smaller and smaller into the distance until it could be eyed no more. Then the skies became one once again. All blurry. I focused my eyes. I saw a sign. Monot Street . I smiled like the devil.