It always rains in the afternoon, I don’t understand why. It rains and I get stuck at the same place, La Tabkha, this cozy bistro in Gemmayzeh that’s almost becoming synonymous with my life. A gigantic proportion of cells in my body must be made out of metabolized nutrients ingested there. A gigantic amount of my indirect relationships with strangers, my mental images of Beirutis also form there.
And when it rains, I stay there, blessed with the kindness of Zouzou, Gaby and Micho entertaining me with free desserts and semi-conversations. It can be kindness, familiarity, reciprocation of my daily investments there, or simply CRM. It definitely is good CRM for they know my name, my food preferences, how slowly I eat, and other little quirks of mine. Like any good enterprise with good CRM, they know much more about their customers than their customers know about them.
I know much more about their other customers, the semi-strangers I bump into with different frequencies. Part of what I know comes from a fluid combination of observation and imagination. How ‘Mrs. Slutty Bimbo With No Taste’ is effectively exploiting ‘Mr. Old Age With Bank Account and a Mercedes’. How ‘Mr. Short And Not So Creative’ is striking poses with his Marlboro Red to compensate for his height and lack of charisma compared to his two colleagues ‘Mr. and Mr. Creative With Stoned Look and Renegade Hair’, who look almost identical and do not seem to be struggling with the same Marlboro Red as they’ve already got attitude. How Mr. Gemmayel Jr. (I don’t know his name), and judging from his care and kindness in greeting people, will definitely have a future in politics. How ‘Ms. Believer in Swiss German Aura Readers’ must be a bitch in bed, and How ‘Ms. Veiled Sunni With 20 Something Daughter’ is plotting to marry her offspring with anyone applicable. In short, I know quite a bit about semi-stranger’s private lives, psychological neuroses, and professional future, and this puts me in direct comparison with them. Empathic or satirical comparison? I don’t really know. But they, the semi-strangers, help me locate myself on the existential map: a comparative, relativist, stratified one.
I know that their mental images get processed with real food, real nutrients. So Ms. Veiled gets processed with Mloukhiyeh, Mr. Short with Curry Chicken, and Ms. Slut with Lazy Cake. I’d like to know if one day in the future, my brain will have concluded neuronal associations between both elements on the accompaniment list. You know, a ‘One Trait One Taste’ kind of slogan.
And finally, metabolites of food, thought and existential compass make up my body cells. So my cell fluids are made of punishment (that’s how much I dislike food), my membranes of curiosity (for its own sake), my mitochondria of guilt, my Golgi apparatus of paranoia, my endoplasmic reticulum of disdain, my RNA of idealism, and my DNA of almost-pure, undiluted optimism.
