The taxi drivers in Beirut are an interesting sector of Lebanese society. Most of the taxi drivers don't seem to speak much English or French, just Arabic. I had some great ones like Hazh who was like a grandfather to me. But I've also had some sleazy-ish ones who ask for friendship and then ask for an innocent coffee date, and I don't really want to guess what was on their mind when they asked for these things and then started driving into an area where people came to “make sex”. Lover's Point jutting out into the raging, deep space-like Mediterranean Sea.
The worst one, though, was the one who tried to get me to hit his hand with a paddle. I refused of course, and was weirded out, sure, but I chose to stay in the cab and ignore his excessive honking and angry blabbering as well as his annoying habit of honking at all the pretty young girls as he drove by and ignoring the others who actually needed taxis. But after he drove around for nearly 40 minutes and dropped off everyone else until only I was left, I was getting seriously annoyed, especially when he asked me a second time to beat his pale, doughy hand with the damn paddle. I refused again and told him that that was enough ("halas" is such a useful phrase in the Mideast), so he put the paddle back into the side pocket of his door and continued to drive and shout and mutter and honk. My nerves were seriously exacerbated, but I figured I'd just bear it until we reached my desired destination- the ABC shopping mall that was supposed to be beautifully decorated for the holidays and crowded with shoppers.
It was when he pulled out the paddle for the 3rd time and asked me again to beat his hand with it, that I finally decided enough was enough, pushed the door open and jetted out into the night, slamming the door shut behind his fat, protesting head. Seething, I marched down the street past the gridlock traffic, having no idea if I was even going in the right direction; I just wanted to get the fuck away from this mad paddle-wielding doughboy. I stopped to ask two trustworthy-looking girls for directions, but then suddenly I heard him coming up behind me demanding his money. The nerve! The doughboy had left his taxi in the middle of traffic to chase after me and demand money for driving me around in his cab for nearly an hour and pleading for pleasure beatings? The nerve, the nerve! I turned around to face him and cursed at him very loudly. After cursing him out, I marched away down the street until I saw a cab with a decent-looking driver and a young clean-cut looking male passenger inside it in shotgun. “ABC Ashrafiyeh?” I asked, giving him my destination. To my great relief, he nodded and so I jumped into the back seat, shut the door, and turned back to see if the doughboy was still following me. Nope, no such luck. I wished he had been because then I would have taken that paddle and beat him over the head with it. I turned back to face the front and realized that the two guys in front were staring at me like “what's your story lady?” So I told them the entire ordeal, and they shook their heads in disbelief.
Names and backgrounds were exchanged, and I suddenly felt very grateful for their company and wished I could stay with them in the cab for the rest of the night where it was warm and safe and the people were kind and decent and not crazy. The passenger was a 29-year-old native who had lived in Kuwait for several years, had gone to school there, and now worked at a bank (or so he said- that comment is for my fellow agents) in Beirut. Near the mall, he offered to walk me to the entrance because the traffic was voluminous and it would be faster to just get out and walk the rest of the way, so we paid the driver, thanked him and got out. I studied the face of the banker by store-light and headlights as we walked side-by-side in the overall darkness. He had large, dark, serious eyes and a serious face but the most important thing was that he looked 100% sane and walked without a paddle and only a harmless, serious-looking briefcase. As we walked, he told me about his job and sort of made a point that he lived alone in his apartment which we were approaching. I was feeling needy and a bit lonely at the moment after my harry experience with the Doughboy, and this part of me desperately wanted to accept his unspoken invitation, stranger though he was. We reached the crossroad where his apartment stood to one side and the mall to the other, but despite the millisecond's hesitation, I merely thanked him heartfeltly, wished him a Merry Christmas, and walked away down the street toward the brightly-lit entrance of the mall.
I think I rely too much on fate. If things are meant to happen, they will happen and there's no need to make any artificial moves or conscious efforts to interrupt the natural flow of events. Water over rocks, like the stalagmites inside Jeita Grotto. Fate be damned, I should start taking things into my own hands. “Nothing is written in the stars,” as the Elephant princess says in Wicked. Really? So there was nothing written in the stars about how I would encounter a mad paddle-wielding doughboy taxi driver in Beirut in the winter of 2008? Really nothing? Well, I guess I just got lucky then. I ought to thank my lucky stars.
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