(Surprise) afternoon daytrip

My phone started ringing as I attempted to tell the bus driver to let me off. As much as I like to think, “here, please,” is an appropriate way to indicate my desire to disembark, it never works on the first try. I was headed to interview my friend Ahmed about getting kids from his camp involved in a basketball program starting on Sunday. It was Wednesday.
Ahmed was calling.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Matt, where are you?”
“I’m about 10 minutes away.” There aren’t bus stops, and I wasn’t exactly on a bus. There are buses, but I’d taken a mini-van. It wasn’t a Dodge Caravan-looking mini-van. It was a box with two rows of seating in the back and a row behind the front seats facing the back windshield. The man sitting next to me had a grocery bag with a banana and a dead pigeon. At least I think it was dead. It didn’t move or make any noise. It must have been dead. The mini-van dropped me a few blocks beyond where I wanted to go primarily because my, “here, please,” went unheeded the first two times.
“Do you want me to tell the taxi driver where to take you?”
“I’m on a bus. Well, I’m just getting off the bus,” I said while receiving my change.
“You’re sure you’re close?”
“I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”
Ahmed’s grandmother was sick, and he needed to go to Saida (Sidon), about half an hour south, to bring her medicine. He invited me. We had to wait for his sister to bring the car. While waiting, we sat with some old men and had an espresso. They asked where I was from, denouncing George Bush when they found out. Ahmed played the role of translator as the man who’d made our espresso talked about Bush destroying the Middle East and America in one fell swoop.
In the amount of time we spent waiting for the car, I could have gotten my interview. Finally, however, we were ready to go. Ahmed’s uncle pulled his car from it’s spot, got out and rolled a tall, skinny, hopefully empty gas container three-fourths of a car length behind a cinderblock along the wall where his car had been parked.
We piled in. I was sandwiched between Ahmed and a different uncle in the back of what’s comparable to a mid-80s, four-door Toyota. Not much room. A three-inch cut-out of Palestine hung from the rearview mirror like an air freshener.
His sister was nowhere to be found. His mom and another woman drove separately with two other men in a different car. I failed to see why Ahmed had to be one of the seven people going on this journey.
Many of the bridges destroyed over the summer aren’t fixed yet. You can see holes or lanes completely missing as you take the detour on dirt and gravel under the bridge. The uncle seated next to me pointed to the destruction and explained it like I hadn’t heard what happened.
When we arrived, we parked by an appliance store owned by another member of Ahmed’s family. Next we walked around the corner to an electronics shop filled with TVs (flatscreen and otherwise), cd players, laptops, telephones, and hangers out (people are always just sitting in shops, keeping the shopkeepers company, I guess). I was to wait in the shop.
Ahmed’s grandmother lives in the Ain Helweh refugee camp. Foreigners, even Lebanese, are not allowed. One of the shop’s hangers out was American.
After telling him what I was doing in Lebanon, I asked what brought him here.
“Stories,” he said with a shake of the head and slight sigh. Curious.
He was a Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia (I think, I kind of forgot by the end of our interaction) but had lived in Mobile, Alabama, 17 of his 21 years. He was less than forthcoming with details but had quite a story.
He’d arrived in Lebanon a month prior with his mom, dad and sister for a two-week visit. Recently his dad returned to the States with his green card for some reason he decided not to supply, brushing my inquiry off with, of all the lines, “it’s a long story.” I was sitting in a shop just hanging out. I had plenty of time. No dice.
He was not having a good time. He was missing a semester of school, surrounded by people he more or less disdained and not doing anything. He went to the American Embassy, his only day-trip to Beirut so far, and told them his wallet and green card were stolen, hoping this would work. He said he had to go back in a few days.
The shop worker (he was too young, probably my age or thereabouts, to be its keeper) ordered us a round of pineapple drinks in cans the width of a Red Bull and half an inch shorter. I assumed it was carbonated because I was warned not to shake it. There were pineapple chunks floating around inside. I had to tilt my head back and shake the can to get the last sweet remnants through the skinny mouth of the can.
“Trying to see if you got ‘em all?” my newfound southern friend asked as he noticed me angling the can, peering in with one eye closed.
Ahmed’s uncle treated our car to dinner at a falafel place well known (or so I’m told) in Saida. I decided to have what the three older men were having to drink – milk, I was told. It was a milky, very sour, yogurt drink. The first sip almost made me vomit because it was so thick, sour and far from what I expected to hit my tongue. I tried, but I couldn’t finish it. Not my cup of tea. I should’ve followed Ahmed’s lead on the Pepsi.