Cafe Younes

Today I write at Cafe Younes. I work on two essays at once, toggling back and forth, composing and revising. Whereas most of Beirut prefers tiny cups of espresso or sludgy turkish or Arabic coffee, french presses rule here. We're close to campus and all things European carry cultural capital. I sit outside on Younes patio, drink my french press, breathe secondhand smoke. Old Arab men reading stacks of newspapers with stories about unrest in Syria, kidnapped Estonians in the Bekaa, and revolution in Libya smoke. Undergrads working on power point presentations smoke. A man who looks just like Javier Bardem and speaks what I'm pretty sure is a non-Lebanese Arabic dialect smokes. Round, mosaic tables. Free copies of the Guardian, International Herald-Tribune, Daily Star, and various Arabic papers. A brilliant place to write.