Muhammad Abi Samra - Beirut Noir

5:05

Khalas, it is known, I might be awful in every single way, but seriously, look at this place! Akh Ya Allah. Look at it. It is done. It can no longer last. Just look at it, ya akhi. The knees of this place are shaking under the weight.

I have to leave this hellhole of a godless, dripping-with-disease place before it blows in my fuckin’ face.

No Ka in my spine, of course. My bones are hollow and the forty-seven winds of the East blow through them.

I craved to be clean so I could just walk safely home. I don’t know why, but something felt very unright and not even getting home offered me consolation. Something in my belly was going crunchy crunch, and it was not butterflies. Nothing this sugary, I’m sure. I felt as if there were a satanic baby inside me, screeching and squealing with black horns and green ejaculations from every hole in its body, and eating avidly at my insides with fork and scissors.

05:36

He climbed the last flight of stairs, went toward the fronty-door, head facing hell, looked through his pockets, clickety clack, where for art thou keys, clickety clack click clack, where for art thou? Can’t we simply barge into our own houses?

The door squeaked open.

“Dirty Teeth!” She paused. “Priest Renzin akhiran decides to show up.” She was waiting for me, in the dark, on the stairs, like a gargoyle from Notre Dame de la Faillite.

I was not startled. No, I just closed my eyes in an I-knew-it kinda way. I looked at her.

“What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in first?”

No.

No.

No.

Fuck no.

No fuckin’ chance in fuckin’ hell no.

“Sure.”

Eesh went in first, her bag jingling jangling, and her hair pitchblacking the little light there was. He followed her in and closed the door behind him. And as the door closed, his stomach churned the way it churned when he would lock himself outside without the keys, or worse, when you closed the door on a chunk of your gut.

“You don’t seem too delighted to see me,” she said, smiling as she put down her things, obviously planning to stay. Renegade locks were brought back to the original chignon and she resembled a predator when she did that.

I stared at her and didn’t answer.

“I need a place to sleep, walla, c’est tout. Would you do that for me?” She got closer and looked me straight in the eyeball. Her nostrils quivered. Sniff... Hmmm... He smells of women... “Can you do that for me, ya habibi, ya Dirty Teeth?”

Yeah. This is what she calls me. Dirty Teeth . Because... well... because I never brush my teeth and they really look horrible, because the quality of your words and the intention behind every phrase you utter apparently affects your gum. There is a certain negativity that one spews as he cusses and badmouths, and it makes our teeth rot faster. So I eared anyway. In any case, you should take one eye at my teeth and you can immediately tell that I am not one to be trusted.

So yeah, Dirty Teeth. But then again, baby boys, what’s in a name? No, really, what’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, no?

“Fine. But I can’t hang. I need sleepage. I’m fucked really bloody tonight. Sorry.”

“Do you have any left?”

Oh good cunt almighty! It would have taken me two decades of shame and stuttering and finger civil wars to utter a request as such. Oh God, this intolerable boldness! This savage carpe diem dressed with the robe of total need.

I didn’t answer. I took off my pants, searched my pockets, and took out the last remaining brown I had, leaving nothing for myself. Having drunk this much I won’t be taking that tonight anyway, this goes without saying.

And she deserves the whole stash for the way she asked me for it.

And if you’ve gone in and out of brown, me broder, you surely know that giving your whole stash to someone can only mean one of two things: ONE, you want a specific something from the person you are giving your stash to, and he surely and of coursely knows what it is; or TWO, something that goes along this line: Here, take it, you have it, no please, take it all. Happy? Good! Now, I don’t want to eye your fuckin’ face ever again. The most vicious of gifts, a white Pandora’s box grinded. Walla.

“Here, take it.”

“I’ll leave you some.”

“No need to, Eesh. Really. No need to. Goodie nacht and the like.”

“Goodie nacht, Dirty Teeth.”

My knees gave in. And as I was crumbling I aimed at the mattress and collapsed on ground zero. Yes. Floor mattress. No bed. Takes too much space.

One fleeting thought, and then another, then I multiplied Z by a trillion and they spread in my room.

6:02

Go child. Go child , they said to me. So I went, naturally. You always do in dreams, there is no notion of good sense there, you just go anywhere you’re told to go and nothing feels like it is your decision, so I did and I ended up walking on clouds and I realized at that point that clouds were naught but the white fingerprints of God as He tries to caress our world. And then I followed my Allah like a hunter hunting a haunted wounded deer in the desert. Then the deer turned mewards and swooshed just like that into a beautiful woman and swooshed again into a gigantic old man who just stared at me with loving hatred in his eyes. I was instantly burned like a Cathar in a spontaneous combustion, burned for all the mischief I had made and caused, and I accepted my punishment, ya akhi, though painless it was surely not. I was then redeemed for all I have done, and I was caressed by a figure in the heights which was bright as bright can be. It was probably the sun itself, can’t really vision it now.

Then, out of nowhere, god savagely attacked me and filled my neck with love bites, and my neck was as mistreated as the necks of the likes of Moe, Jesus, Akhenaton, and such as, combined. I screamed: Enough! But all I wanted was: more, more, embrace my torso with your strong legs and squeeze the life out of me.

I knelt and I eared an eerie voice telling me: Oh Renzin, ya Sheikh Renzin, you’re forgiven. And I fell down from heaven in slow-motion like a Prometheus on fire, burning like a gigantic zeppelin, and thousands and thousands of little ones were crying and going bouhouhou, I don’t believe it, bouhouhou, Renzin is down, children, Sheikh Renzin is going down!

And all throughout, Eesh was looking at me squirm like a worm, all tattooed and riddled with wounds, skinny and hairy, revolting in everything and in every way, and she was crying. And who could possibly blame her? Look at me, what kind of father could I possibly be?

Originally written in English.

Caracas

When I was very young, twenty-one years before this moment, my name was Yamen. I loved little boxes and I know that they loved me too. We agreed that we were just the same. In everything. In our smells, our way of walking, how we closed our eyes, those things. I used to see boxes as six closed eyes connected to each other. I had only two eyes, like all people, animals, and birds. But I practiced closing them like boxes did. Completely vertical. And I still practice. I never manage it completely — when I close my eyes and touch my drooping eyelids, I find that they aren’t completely vertical. How can I describe this to you all? I don’t know. They just aren’t vertical, they aren’t straight like a ruler. And so I practice. And the boxes know that and wait for me to succeed so they can be happy like me. Because practice will make us resemble each other, even if it takes a number of years. The important thing is to get there. And this is what helps me to sleep better every night.