KebabQuest

I knew it was going to be a bad day in Beirut when I got booted out of the break­fast buf­fet at the down­town Radisson.
I had been enjoy­ing my hum­mus, green olives and nan with a pot of strong cof­fee when I made the mis­take of putting down my fork so I could turn the page in the Patrick O’Brian novel I was read­ing. The waiter grabbed my plate with­out ask­ing if I was done, and scur­ried off. I fig­ured, hey, no prob­lem, I can always get another plate. And besides, I still got my cof­fee. But then the waiter came back and took those too.
Now, I could’ve raised a fuss, but I was too tired to remem­ber how to say, “stop,” in Arabic. (I remem­ber now: “kiff.”) you see, I’m still on D.C. time so I couldn’t sleep the night before. I was nearly deliri­ous. And, on the radio, they were play­ing a Christmas ren­di­tion of the Macarena. (don’t ask.)
Anyways, I had inter­views — I’m on assign­ment here for Defense Technology International. So a cou­ple hours later I hailed a cab and headed out. By 4 o’clock, I was done with my inter­views, even more exhausted and, what’s more, starv­ing. I needed some kebab bad. I tried to hail a cab but they were all full. I walked down a street, hail­ing cabs all the while, until I came to an army check­point. A sol­dier asked me, in Arabic, where I was going. I replied in french and we had a rather mud­dled con­ver­sa­tion that resulted in him point­ing back the way I had come and ges­tur­ing with his rifle. So I turned around … And got turned around. I couldn’t remem­ber which way was home.
I finally got a cab. The dri­ver spoke some french. He didn’t know where the Radisson was, so it was up to me. I had no idea so I picked a direc­tion and hoped I might even­tu­ally rec­og­nize some­thing. But half an hour later, I decided we were going in the wrong direc­tion. I admit, I blamed my cab­bie. Beirut is his town; he should know where the Radisson is. So I told him to stop “over there” and I hopped out with a mind to walk a cou­ple blocks then hail another cab with, hope­fully, a smarter cab­bie.
By now I could’ve killed and eaten a small Lebanese per­son. Perhaps a baby Druze.
I walked down a sketchy alley­way full of broken-​​down cars and greasy, dark-​​eyed mechan­ics who stared at me as I passed. I was feel­ing very American in a very bad way, so I waved down the first cab I saw and hopped in with­out look­ing at the dri­ver. Then a voice said, in French, “num­ber two?“
It was the same cab­bie as before. And it was too late to refuse his ser­vice. He was already speed­ing down the road, assur­ing me that he had just remem­bered where the Radisson was.
(Lest you fail to appre­ci­ate the sheer enor­mity of this coin­ci­dence, let me stress: Beirut is crawl­ing with tens of thou­sands of cabs, and in 10 min­utes I had walked sev­eral blocks in a ran­dom direc­tion from where I got dropped off. Hundreds of cars passed within sight, includ­ing scores of cabs. The odds of hail­ing the same cab­bie a sec­ond time in that envi­ron­ment are astro­nom­i­cal.)
Hey, Macarena!
Half an hour later, I was at the Radisson and my cab­bie was 20,000 livres richer. That’s no fewer than eight kebab-​​equivalents. Speaking of which, I found the near­est kebab stand, politely refused some skew­ered lamb brains bob­bing in olive oil and ordered two kebabs.
They were the most deli­cious kebabs I’ve ever had. And they haven’t even made me sick (yet).
– David Axe
p.s.: the Lebanese army has sta­tioned an M-​​113 armored per­son­nel car­rier with a .50-​​caliber machine gun at the McDonald’s down the street, per­haps to guard the “McArab” chicken shawarma they serve there.

December 18th, 2006 | Axe in Iraq (and Elsewhere) | 23652 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/12/18/kebabquest/KebabQuest2006-12-18+15%3A35%3A42wonk You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.