I feel like I have to return to O because I still have time.
Let's read this one.
This is a fun one.
This is for a show in cabaret-ish place in Beirut
called Metro Madina.
They do many shows.
One of the shows is called Bar Farouk
and it goes back in time to trace Lebanese songs.
I don't know how much back in time they go,
but it's such a beautiful show.
And I wrote this after I watched the show.
It's titled Everything Here Is An Absolute.
Bar Farouk, Beirut, 2016 perhaps.
Look at where this nostalgia has brought us.
We go down the stairs and order frozen margaritas.
It's been years since we've lived here.
The waiter shows us our table,
hopes we don't mind two American boys sitting with us.
There's no space for them elsewhere in this cabaret
called Metro
in a capital without metros.
We say we don't mind.
We are used to the city of small spaces
into which everything fits.
The foreign students are our age
about a decade ago.
[LAUGHTER]
They tell us their names and I decide
to call them Ahmed and Faysal.
[LAUGHTER]
True story.
[CHUCKLING]
They agree.
As the performers go on stage,
as the songs and smoke rise,
we raise a toast and Ahmed and Faysal smile and clap non-stop.
They've even learned the Arab shoulder shimmy.
Once I've margarita'd enough, I start explaining song lyrics:
she's warning him he will regret and it's
no disaster if he leaves,
and yes, motor is pronounced motore.
And suddenly I discover I don't really
know who Zayn al-Abideen is
though I've been singing for him all my life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, needs no interpretation.
Neither do the colorful costumes and feathers and all this
going back in time.
I want to shout, "No one eats hummus with carrots
and no one calls this pita bread.
It is just bread,
khobz, because everything here is an absolute.
Then Faysal says thank you
and I remember one expression for thank you is
"may your hands be safe and sound."
And then I ask, doesn't Beirut remind you of New York?
His silence is polite.
To which I argue, there are no fire escapes here,
but there could have been.
Some cities, they burn faster than others.
I Beiruted East Houston at first sight
and my friend disagreed and said streets
were making me delirious again.
What I mean is, if you write your name on a wall
and find it gone
you say my name has left.
Would you feel abandoned?
Would you trace it again?
What I mean is there are songs where the fallen don't have rope
enough to climb out of wells.
And there are songs where the lovers
return when the night deepens.
[APPLAUSE]