In the sea of Beirut's afternoon traffic, our taxi inches along the way towards Hamra. There are no lanes; when I look out at the cars crowding together and the scooters darting in between it's more like a river than any other street I've seen.
We've passed the balloon shop and are cresting the hill that slopes towards downtown on the right and the air's full of dust and soft tires squealing and horns. A woman in a small silver car with a pink six spray-painted on the rear door cuts in front of us from a side street, and our driver looks at her, a quick, sharp look. He doesn't make any angry gesture or comment, though; he whistles instead, a sweet birdlike trill without aggression or anger.
Further on, but not much, we're stopped altogether next to a car with the windows down and two young men in front. "How's it going, guys?" our driver asks, smiling, and I'm thrilled that I can understand him and their response, a laid-back, "everything's good." We start to move again and they speed ahead of us.
The road clears as we approach the hill that leads down towards Verdun and two kids on scooters veer across the road in the wrong direction, almost scraping against our bumper. Again, our driver's only comment is that warbling whistle as they speed into the other lane to join the traffic headed in the right direction. He says something to my roommate in the front seat that I can't quite catch, and when he repeats it I'm too flustered to come up with a reply. "Fifty years," he says, and I realize he's talking about how long he's been a taxi driver. I want to make conversation but the best I can manage is a quiet, "wow."
We've passed the balloon shop and are cresting the hill that slopes towards downtown on the right and the air's full of dust and soft tires squealing and horns. A woman in a small silver car with a pink six spray-painted on the rear door cuts in front of us from a side street, and our driver looks at her, a quick, sharp look. He doesn't make any angry gesture or comment, though; he whistles instead, a sweet birdlike trill without aggression or anger.
Further on, but not much, we're stopped altogether next to a car with the windows down and two young men in front. "How's it going, guys?" our driver asks, smiling, and I'm thrilled that I can understand him and their response, a laid-back, "everything's good." We start to move again and they speed ahead of us.
The road clears as we approach the hill that leads down towards Verdun and two kids on scooters veer across the road in the wrong direction, almost scraping against our bumper. Again, our driver's only comment is that warbling whistle as they speed into the other lane to join the traffic headed in the right direction. He says something to my roommate in the front seat that I can't quite catch, and when he repeats it I'm too flustered to come up with a reply. "Fifty years," he says, and I realize he's talking about how long he's been a taxi driver. I want to make conversation but the best I can manage is a quiet, "wow."
