In the 1960s and 1970s, Hamra Street was to Beirut what the Champs d’elysee is to Paris. It was the place to be, glamour writ large. Movie houses and theatres stood alongside shops selling the most luxurious international brands. Famous folks flocked to Hamra Street—movie stars, artists, and intellectuals all had their favourite spot to be seen. The place was a smooth glass of bourbon; it went down easily. Its parties were legendary. Its spirit was intoxicating. You never wanted to leave.

Things do not last.

Today, Hamra Street is no place to linger, especially if you look like me. It’s a place to get through, not one to savour. And even though people still drink coffee on patios and frequent the array of shops, a whiff of desperation exudes from the street. Tensions are high. An explosion seems imminent. The fabrics holding everything together cannot hold. All trust in systems has evaporated. There is only you and me. And no one will save us.

I know he follows me.

Taxi drivers inch along Hamra looking longingly at pedestrians in the hope they might request a ride. They are so lonely, and they want a date. “Taxi?” is a common question. Graffiti decorates the exteriors of banks. Military personnel linger at check points looking bored; the assault weapons they carry strike me as heavy and cumbersome. Money exchangers attract more clients than Starbucks or Nike; people enter with stacks of Lebanese pounds and exit with some American dollars or vice-verse. ATM screens welcome customers, but no one uses any. Cash is king in Lebanon, but the king is dead. A finely dressed man stands at the edge of perfume shop and tries to give samples to passersby; no one takes a single one. He looks strangely out of place on Hamra, as if he belongs to a bygone era and had been accidently teleported to the future and where he is now stuck. Futures are not necessarily better. Inevitable progression is the lie that breeds complacency. Things get worse and need not improve.

It’s the end of November. The Christmas season is here. I had read once that in Hamra’s golden era, before the fifteen-year civil war and before the present economic catastrophe, that men dressed as Santa Clause used to walk up and down the street handing out candles to people. Today, the streets are bereft of Santas. Maybe it’s still too early in the season. Maybe Santa will still come. But I doubt it. Perhaps, I reason, the boy who follows me has mistaken me for Santa Claus. Perhaps, he wonders what goodies I have tucked away in my pockets or inside my backpack. Perhaps, he believes he has been a good boy this year and expects a treat in return for his upright behaviour. If this is this case, if the boy believes I should reward him because of his virtuousness over the past year, then he has only come to claim what is rightfully his. If I am Santa Claus to the boy, if I am expected to share my presents with him because of my standing in society, then I should not begrudge the boy for following me, since he only does what he knows to be just and right. I have behaved myself, Santa, he says, so I have come to collect my present. But I am not Santa. I have no contractual obligations with this boy. I owe him nothing, and he owes me the same. Yet the boy does not share my feelings, for he has placed himself to my left and now holds his hand out as we walk down Hamra together. He speaks to me in a hushed Arabic, but I do not need to understand his words to know what he wants. His hand gesture is universal, beyond ambiguity. He wants what I have and what he does not. That is all.

I do not make eye contact with the boy. I only shake my head in response to his words, but the boy has learned not to accept the initial “no” as the final word. Maybe he has learned that Westerners are a guilt-ridden bunch, and if he just absorbs my initial indifference, my natural inclination towards pity will prompt me to reach into my pocket and retrieve a bill or two. Maybe he has learned that as a group, Westerners would never go out of their way to support larger initiatives that would eradicate this boy’s needs, but as individuals, we are willing to spend a few dollars to convince ourselves that we have done our part to alleviate the suffering of a fellow human being.

The boy is persistent, but he is no match for Starbucks. This is my destination, and the front door, which I easily walk through, stops the boy in his tracks. He cannot follow. I imagine he learned this from experience—that latte drinkers do not enjoy having their beverage ruined by little hands. And if he were to enter and if he were to ask patrons for something, men and women in uniform would swoop upon like hawks on mice and carry him back outside, where he belongs. Starbucks is a sanctuary from the outside; its doors keep all that unpleasantness outside. 

I order a soy latte, grande, but the barista politely informs me that the only non-dairy milk they have is almond and wonders whether that will satisfy my palette. I tell him not to worry; almond milk is fine. “And what is your name?” he asks, holding a black marker to a coffee takeaway cup, which I am happy to see is decorated with Christmas colours. “My name is Jesse,” and he correctly spells it on his first try, enunciating each letter slowly and carefully. My latte costs over 200,000 Lebanese pounds, which is still less than what I would pay for the same drink in Canada. This calculation pleases me because I do not like to spend unnecessarily. I am not extravagant in my spending, but I do like a soy, or almond, latte every now and then. I sometimes wonder whether this makes me a bad person, but I reason that the rest of my good needs, like volunteering with displaced people, will make up for this one indiscretion. I take the change and stuff it inside my pocket.

As the barista prepares my drink, I look outside at Hamra’s commotion, and even though I cannot see him, I know the boy is out there, waiting and waiting, for where would he have to be? Further questions come. Is he Syrian? Is he Lebanese? Does it matter? I debate this internally. Opportunities for Syrian refugees in Lebanon are few and far between, and children often have difficulty accessing education, whereas none of these obstacles exist for the Lebanese, since they belong and have protections keeping them from falling further and further into abyss. Yet the country’s financial collapse has ruined these protections for many; jobs have disappeared, savings have vanished, and inflation has skyrocketed. For Lebanese experiencing poverty, it may be hard to distinguish between them and Syrian refugees based on any metric of socioeconomic wellbeing. But Lebanese still belong, and this is not nothing.

I feel bad, and not even the first sip from my almond latte can lift my spirits, delicious as it is. The barista has done fine work. Yet the latte makes me feel ridiculous. Conspicuous and exposed. It marks me. The latte speaks for me, and only foam comes. I look through my wallet and at the dozen bills resting inside. And I decide then and there that I will take one of these bills and give it to the boy. There is nothing revolutionary about this gesture; it changes nothing. The bill allows the boy to buy something small, maybe some food, but he will be hustling on Hamra tomorrow and the next day. No. Nothing changes for the boy. But something does change for me. I am buying peace of mind. I am paying the boy to leave me alone so that I may enjoy my drink without having his tiny fingers in my peripheral vision. I am paying the boy to fuck off.

Outside, the boy is there, and when he sees me emerge with my drink, he comes scurrying. I have the bill ready and place it into his hands. After he disappears into Hamra’s hecticness, my latte suddenly tastes better; the caffeine enlivens my mood, and I can concentrate better on the city’s faded charms, its crumbling beauty. The sun feels nice, and the Mediterranean calls for me to come. But unbeknownst to me, someone had witnessed me drop the bill into the boy’s hand, a teenaged girl, and she wonders how far she can stretch my generosity, since there is no difference between her and the boy in terms of opportunity and standing. Both feel the lack, even on this gloriously sunny day. So she catches up to me and speaks to me in hurried, anxious Arabic whose meaning remains unequivocable even if I haven’t the faintest idea of what her words actually mean. She, too, wants my money, and in her pleas, as desperate as they sound, she presents a deal: Give me what you gave the boy, and you will never have to see me again. In this implicit arrangement, I can continue to drink my latte and enjoy this lovely morning in Beirut without her nuisance for the cost of only a few dollars. And what are a few dollars to me, she says. What are a few dollars to a man who has travelled a great distance to Beirut and stays in a nice hotel and carries an expensive camera in his backpack and drinks his latte and can walk around this city and enjoy its charms. And what better way to experience a city than to meet its outcasts.

My Starbucks feels heavy in my hand. I am carrying a dumbbell, and I am out of shape. I look ridiculous, and the people on the street look not at this teenager following me because that’s nothing out of the ordinary. But what is remarkable is my almond latte. What is remarkable is my being chased with a Starbucks in hand. I hate the eyes on me more than the teenager beside me. I hate that I cannot direct their eyes elsewhere. I hate that I cannot vanish into the sidewalk and then let the earth swallow me up. I hate that my audience can see me and the obvious.

Another bill disappears from my wallet, and another child disappears from my side, but a storekeeper, up ahead, has seen the spectacle unfold. She has seen me drop a bill into outstretched hands, and she does not approve. And she lets me know her disapproval when she clucks her tongue at me when I pass her. Her cluck is deafening; it echoes in my mind and soon kills all other sounds. Her cluck says that my actions have consequences beyond my immediacy. My pity only encourages them to roam the streets day in and day out. You feed a stray and they will return again and again. And what happens to us, the people who work for a living, if we have more and more strays polluting Hamra Street? What happens when people cannot shop without harassment? What happens to our livelihoods?

I do not dwell on the woman’s questions for long, since the coffee once again feels light in my hand and the sun once again feels warm on my skin. The fog has cleared, and Beirut again sparkles. My body absorbs the caffeine with a perverse eagerness, and my senses sharpen. I am alert. But I cannot surrender to my surroundings, the joy of simply being in the world, before checking that I am free from the unpleasantness of the city’s cracks and crevices, so I take a moment to glance behind me, only to confirm that no one else lurks behind me, and to my complete dismay and outrage, I see the teenager, the recipient of my generosity, talking to a woman holding an infant and then I see her point in my direction. I am betrayed. The teenager has advertised my kindness to another member of the downtrodden; she has disclosed the contents of my pocket. She had shifted the spotlight back onto me. I am found once more. Machinery has cut the trees providing me cover. Ripped from their roots, they now lie dead and hard, ready to be further sawed and severed, for some other use. But they have left me naked and exposed. I hear the coyote’s yelp and the wolf’s howl. Beyond my sight, the beasts are surrounding me. I know it. As a kid playing hide and seek, I always knew when I was on the precipice of being found. Staying hidden behind a piece of furniture or tucked inside a closet, I could see my nemesis advancing as if actually picking up my scent; they inched closer and closer until I knew my capture was inevitable, and the moments before were always the worst because I could do nothing but wait for his eyes to meet mine and then to endure all the consequences that would follow.

On Hamra, I pick up my pace. She follows I know, but maybe I can create enough distance for her to question whether my pursual is worthwhile. It is. Because even though she carries an infant in her hands, she gains ground on me, second by second, and she does not let my ignoring of her calls dissuade her, since I am sure everyone initially says no. I am sure she has never received any money without persistence, without first learning to absorb the initial blows of indifference. I am sure that indifference has also manifested itself in unkind words and maybe even the threat of, or actual, violence, but she soldiers on because there is nothing left to do but soldier, and even if she receives nothing from me or you or her or him, she can at least know she has reminded the world, the oblivious, that she too exists.

I cannot doubt her existence regardless of how much I may want to. She is next to me and follows my movement step by step. She repeats the same refrain in Arabic over and over, interspliced by a few English words, such as “hungry” and “please.” From the corner of my eye, I see her direct her infant child towards me as proof of her predicament. This is her evidence. She submits it before me. Even though I know exactly what she wishes to prove with her documentation, I do not participate in the viewing. If I look, all is lost. If I look, I must walk through the door. I will not shake that hand. I am not ready for what it demands of me. There is a world outside myself that I would rather not inspect with any detail because the mess I find will swallow my time, resources, and spirit. The world is my neglected closet. I have a general idea of its contents, the stuff I have thrown inside over the years without a thought about its organization or care, but I know once the door edges open, the clothes and boardgames and baseball bats will come falling and crashing out, and my mom will hear the sound from upstairs and she will demand that I finally fix the mess I have neglected all these years. She will demand that I find a proper place for all my things so that they do not pile up every again. Respect your things, she will say.

This is a world I do not want to know. So I keep walking and politely shaking my head and touching my heart. “I’m sorry,” I say again and again, as if these words would magically make her disappear. My eyes are always ahead. To the sea. I know it beckons. I know this encounter is only a moment of unpleasantness, which the sun and water will soon replace. I know she too will pass. Yet she does not shift from my side. No number of polite rebukes shatter her confidence. She keeps pace and does not seem tired even while negotiating the presence of an infant her arms. “Hungry,” she says. “Please,” she says. There is nothing for her to do but walk and follow. And I realize that there is nothing for me to do except pay. But I will not pull my wallet again, lest I attract the attention of others lurking beyond my sight. With my left hand, I rummage through my pocket, looking for the change from my latte, which I still hold in my right. A bill appears in my hand, and without looking at it, I display it for her to see, for her to take, so that she will just leave me be. But she does not take it; instead, she keeps pleading with me, becoming even more desperate and incensed. The bill in question, I know, is not of the same value as the ones I gave the other children; it is worth considerably less. But I thought it enough to buy her departure, but no. She will not take this bill. She will not touch it. She will not enter into an agreement with me for such a puny sum, a sum I know she can do little with. She will not go away for so little.

“Hungry,” she says. “Please,” she says. And then again and again. These words again and again. The infant is in my face. Mother is on the cusp of tears. Everything is intimate and awful. Hamra has become a runway of suffering, and I am the judge. I dispense praise and rewards based how great the spectacle of impoverishment is. I toss bills at the participants. My praise is silent but beyond doubt. My money flies and flies.

The sun sill shines, and the sea is less than a kilometre away. The Starbucks cup in my hand disgusts me. I want to throw it against a wall or smash it to the ground, but I do not because I realize I cannot. I stop walking and retrieve my wallet from my pocket. I am sure somewhere, above or behind me, someone watches this spectacle unfold and has a hearty laugh at my expense. The westerner has lost his resolve, look at how he melts even at the end of November. Fuck the spectators. Fuck their clever comments. They can just shut their window or close their door. Are they brave enough to walk the streets? Are they willing to carve an X onto their forehead and then enter the world? From my wallet, I take a few bills and shove them in her direction. She says words, I think of thanks, but I do not care what she has to say because we are done, which I make clear with my body language. This interaction is finished. We have signed the contract; now let us go our separate ways. She disappears, returning, I assume from where she came.

I continue forwards, my pace reversing to its normal rhythm, but I want to run. Hardly anything remains in my Starbucks cup, and my last sip does not nothing to dispel the growing revulsion amassing in my stomach. I feel sick and fat. The sun has for a second taken refuge behind a cloud. I toss my Starbucks cup in the trash bin and instantly feel lighter. I grip the straps of my backpack for the first in what seems like eternity, and its feel reassures me. I am protecting myself.  Soon, I will walk among the other tourists and well-to-do people along the waterfront. Soon, I will retrieve my camera from backpack and take photos of the beautiful Mediterranean. Soon, I will be free from these memories. But before I get there, I pull out my wallet again and look through the remaining bills. About ten dollars. My generosity cost me about ten dollars.