bilal

bilal's is my cafe-around-the-corner. bilal is the owner of the cafe. he calls it "oasis". on one of the walls there is a picture of a happy camel with a bubble coming out of his mouth, saying: "i would walk one mile to come and eat at oasis". maybe when he put up the picture he had no idea of the metric equivalent of a mile.
he is from jordan, you see. he's originally palestinian from Ramallah yet he's very reticent to reveal more. we sometimes think oh maybe he's a spy but then we immediately regret the thought and feel guilty and mean and paranoid because he is just a simple arab man trying to make ends meet and works his butt off and does not want trouble. palestine and the arab world are probably trouble. avoid trouble and it'll avoid you.
i first met him when i was in stl for a weekend with my friend from iceland and we were dying from thirst after the house marathon and dropped in. there was this short lanky man balding with a friendly smile and eyes scintillating with mischief behind the counter:
-good morrrrning ladies what can i do for you today?
-where are you from?
-jordan, and you? (smile)
-lebanon (i smile and wait for him to exclaim to welcome me and speak to me in arrrrabic)
-oh really (smile), and are you from lebanon too (to my very blond-and-blue eyed icelandic friend) - (wink wink at me)
not bad, this bilal

months later i come back with friends who are regulars there and know him and smoke hookah and drink arrrrrabic tea at his place. they had warned me.
-goodmorrrrning what do you want today? (ok it was 9PM but they had warned me and i kept a straight face)
-i want a baklawa
-oh herrre (and loads a plate) take 3 and take this cinnamon pastry and chocolate one (chocolate baklawa?!) and take and take (loads plate full of multi-colored, multi-faceted thingies he calls baklawa).
i pay for them all. it's ok, it's my first time there officially, he's a simple arab man trying to make ends meet and works his butt off.
-what do you want to drink?
-euuh, (i look at his menu that's flooding with coffeeish and teaish words), what's arabic cappuccino?
-(his face contorts) you don't know what that is!! (he turns to my friend, shakes his head indignantly from side to side and snorts) she doesn't know what arrrabic cabbuccino is. huh. herrre i will give you arrabic cabbuccino and i get a barrel of turkish coffee with a shiny layer of foam on the top. therrrre.

he was like the soup nazi from seinfeld turned cabbuccino nazi.
i walk by sometimes and find him outside at 10PM and i say hi and he says good morrrrning and the men from the shops nextdoor say bilal it is 10PM but he likes to say good morrrning all day and night

he has 2 teenage waiters working for him and nazis them around bossing and screaming and pointing and watching and the poor boys are sweating and streaming and stuttering. they keep changing every week; just today he was training some new victim.
one day i was having dinner when a new customer walked in at night and the boy waiter turned and said in a resonant voice so every one heard "good morning". he did not roll the rrr but he said it in well-trained bilaian kind of way. it's a total dictatorship and it's always morning and it's always good!
at one point a bunch of us were drinking tea there and i ask him to play fairouz (he usually plays american music) and he clicks his tongue and announces that to his dismay the fairouz cd (out of all his other cd's) is not working and kept right on playing mark anthony. ok. fine.

when the war in lebanon broke out me and r were at his place smoking outside and found out. we started smoking even more and when we heard that the airport was being blasted we ran to my place to listen to the news. then we remembered we had forgotten to pay. we ran back and found him sitting there fuming with his arms crossed as i paid him and apologized and blamed the war. he forced a smile and shrugged and did not ask abt the war. he said i could have paid tomorrow but he was fuming.
he's a character and a devious one at that and reminds me of the merchant of venice but i like him maybe because he's such a character and seems like a seinfeld one at that.

a few days after the war started i was studying there, alone, thinking of lebanon and what was becoming of it, when suddenly i heard a crystaline voice singing "to beirut". fairouz.

he looks at me from behimd the counter twinkling his eyes. i smile and nod and say "fairouz!" as though he didn't know but it came out in one of those moments when you don't know what to say so you state the obvious.
he nods back and smiles a real smile.
i say "shoukran" (thank you) and he says "i fixed it"... and sold me the arrrrabic tea for free.

today i was there and two unsuspecting americans walk up to the counter. he preempts them and says: "what do you want, gyros, hummus, falafel, fava beans, chicken kabab" and he embues each word with a unique musical tone like a subliminal message. the american man let him go on with his musical singing of the heftier parts of the menu and then spoke in an apathetic monosyllabic voice: 'latte'

but bilal keeps singing the same tune with every customer. he will not give up. i watched him today and i swear he amazes me how he remains unfathed by indifference. he resists in his own little wily ways.
and now he plays fairouz almost every time i am there. today it was 'ana habbeitak habbeitak' which in my head sounds like 'ana hadd beitak hadd beitak'.