S C E N E (I)
بيروت
BEIRUT, 2024ce
***
“Let me begin by saying that the Jew of Beirut is kind!”
So, if anyone 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 this man! And, they would say, “Go throughout our city asking questions because this man came to us at a tough and strange time with a giving of his whole self.” He, employed, deployed his whole 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, he has a loveable madness.
They say here, that “the Roots of the Righteous will grow like a cedar in Lebanon” and he did immediately. He flourished, he wilted, and he died three whole times in just forty days for us, to impress us; or almost impress us. Or just to impress upon us that his soul is an old soul, his roots, are from here. Or at least next door.
The Jew of Beirut has a name of course and that name is Sebastian Adonaev. His Kunya is “Abu Yazan,” because at some time during the Isis Wars, he took on the name of the illegitimate half-Druze son of his ex-romantic partner Polina Mazaeva. He also has a Kurdish name if you can even believe such robust internationalism: Kawa Zivistan; the blacksmith of winter; from his time serving in the YPG12. A Kurdish militia he served with in Syria. But we trusted and mostly still trust him. Though not completely with marrying our daughters, unless of course, he converts to Islam or Christianity depending which faction he wants to marry into. He is not wealthy or internationally famous to marry a Druze. Even if he were, we would all trust him even less, and kind of frown on those kinds of unions. Those people think they all come back, that makes them a little fancy if you ask around.
As we tried and recalled the speed of it all in an existential moment, he fell out of the sky into our laps and eventually 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 straits, but our epic past and a possible, yet improbable glorious future! He was not pursuing “unique experiences” instead he pursued a life he did not get to lead, at least not yet. An old saying of Kahil Gibran: “If I was not born Lebanese, I would have pursued it!”
The Jew of Beirut is a paramedic by trade. Which means at least he is good with his hands when it matters the most. Existing somewhere between a doctor and a bandit. That causes him to want to help anyone and everyone all at once, as well as have an eye for certain details. 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. A laugh in the face of terrible odds, a free life with style.
They say the Jews are a people with no roots, a drifting trickster people. But as his tribe is known for, he tried to make himself valuable. And valuable we would certainly later declare him to be. A real Bonafide “Middle Eastern gentleman;” “one of us.” Though which faction could claim him?
No one knows precisely how many Jews are left in Lebanon. Maybe ten, maybe forty, maybe just one. But they are certainly one of eighteen classified and protected identities. So, all of them are welcome here in some form! If they are not part of a Zionist invader plot. Preferably if they convert to any of the 17 other confessions before marrying anyone. That would be preferred.
They say, “he is writing something about us.” Trying to translate some shall we call it Easten-Western-Middle Eastern poetry? Something about a “confederation from the Maghreb to the Indus”; talk of a noble mad man.
When they finally arrested the Jew wandering around the working-class Shi’a neighborhood called Chiya he did not know where he was, did not even know what he was. He certainly did not have any “so-called EMT program” in mind at that point.
“A promising idea for a vacation was somewhere with a beach, and they do not hate Americans openly and do not want to immediately kill Jews. A bad idea is a place where just being you makes you a threat to a potentially considerable number of the natives, to several of the population; where being you could get you in trouble. Troubles such as when a citizen patrol stops you and an off-duty cop puts you in some handcuffs. And natives are going in pockets for papers.”
“You’re making us look bad!” yells Yaelle D’Arrigo in his head. Yaelle is his new Vice President and his voice of reason and constraint. Her role as acting President while he travels to Lebanon speaks to who he thinks he can trust, and Sicilian Puerto Rican EMT Yaelle D’Arrigo is stone cold tough, and he trusts her. But she cannot help him now.
They cuff him from the front, which means they don’t really think he’s an actual threat and they go in his pockets and take out his wallet which sort of proves he’s a well-meaning tourist and not an ill meaning spy; since the wallet confirms he’s a paramedic from the city of New York, and an American not an Israeli.
“Is he drunk?” the off-duty cop asks in French.
“I cannot believe you got arrested already,” says Yaelle in his head, “In Chiya of all places. Making pour team look terrible!”
“Why are you here?” the off-duty cop asks. A small crowd had formed, “why are you here in Beirut?!”
“You’re making us look bad,” says Yaelle in his head. Then there is another voice inside his head, where it comes from and who it speaks for no one knows yet:
“If you want to save Yaelle’s life you have to ROAR! KUJUCHAGULIA! and throw this law man across the very pavement; and beat his fucking ass!” Then: “do something really extra fucking crazy so they have to tie you to a chair and disregard you, long enough to escape”, says a voice in his head.
“That is if you want Yaelle to live, if you do not care about the lives of your friends then just go quietly. They are gonna throw little Karessa of a plane with no parachute and splatter her on Martyr Square.” And then you fight your way through the unbreathing gloom!
In his head he wonders if everyone here is just an actor, gathered at dusk, watching him in hand cuffs. He is in one of those sensitivity training villages like in Jordan filled with actors playing Arab civilians. A teaching movement. The off-duty cop slaps him, “Why are you knocking on people’s doors man!”
In Chiya, Beirut the Shiite part of town. He sees a mental of the CIA pushing his little Asian girlfriend Karessa Abe out a plane cargo for and she explodes on the ground of Martyr Square like a red pasta coconut. Of course he does not want anything to happen to his friends.
He yells” “! KUJICHAGULIA!” And throws all his weight at the off-duty copper knocking them both on the ground then he takes off running down the poorly paved street, unlit boulevard howling into the night.
“You’re definitely making us look bad!” says Yaelle in his head.
“Why are you going to Beirut!” Karessa cried the night he left. She begged him not to go. She knew it was potentially a one-way trip. As he runs through the Beirut night, still in cuffs down the unlit streets of Chiya, all he can think about, all he can picture is that there are different layers to the world, and he is crossing over into an uncharted realm. As if, as if, in this world of layers you could take a deep breath, and drop yourself into a subverted reality, a whole other plane of being. And in the movement, in the passing through to the other side if you retained your perspective, you could learn something, even teach something to people that see and live in only one reality of their own creation. And it was if, almost if, you could look into the eyes of G-d.
***
WALTER SEBASTIAN ADLER 
Leave a comment