The Jew of Beirut

The Jew of Beirut

Written by Adler S Walt

P R E L U D E

Let me begin by saying that the Jew of Beirut is kind. 

So, if anyone everyone ever accused this man of madness, hijackings, robbery, or vice, or immoral acts of cavorting with criminals and whores, all would be fast to say, it is not true. That is not his man! And, they would say, “Go throughout our city because this man came to us at a tough and strange time with a giving of his whole self. He, employed, deployed his heart, and naked soul, and opened his pockets on the streets of Beirut for us to see into him. He was in some ways the finest of his kind, in other ways, a crude foreigner, but he was indeed filled with “old soul” and we saw what he said, and did; clearly. Well, perhaps he has a loveable madness.

They said here, that “the roots of the righteous will grow like a cedr in Lebanon” and he did immediately. He flourished, wilted, and died three whole times in just forty days for us, to impress us almost.

The Jew of Beirut has a name and that name is Sebastian Adonaev. His Kunya is Abu Yazan. He also has a Kurdish name if you can even believe such internationalism: Kawa Zinvistan. But, we trusted and trust him still to this day. Though not completely with marrying our daughters, unless of course, he converts to Islam or Christianity. He definitely isn’t wealthy or internationally famous to marry a Druze. 

And, here is the part of the story: as we try and recall the speed of it all in an existential moment that, he fell out of the sky into our laps. And hearts. Yet, this man was coming to know us, in our hardest times since the civil conflict. He sought to know not only about our current dire straights, but but our epic past and also glorious future! 

He was not pursuing “unique experiences” instead he pursued a life he didn’t get to lead, yet.

The Jew of Beirut is a “paramedic” by trade. That causes him to want to help anyone and everyone all at once. And so, he encountered us too, as a partly trained lawyer and a full-blown poet, a partisan commander of sorts in his left labor movement, a painter and a life lover; a hustler, a lover, a wide talker; in multilingualism so basically already in a sense fully Lebanese!? No, of course not, but he exudes the energy we have in us as a people surely.