Shopping… for a Smile

Picture this…

She’s wearing more makeup than clothes… For real! Her lips are so swollen, you can’t tell if it’s the Botulinum Toxin (vulgarly known as Botox) or permanent surgery; but you surely could tell they did not come with the original package from her mother’s womb. She must have depleted a whole lipstick of dark blood-red to cover both lips, around which, an interrupted and uneven line of black liner painfully tries to trace a contour. Her mouth looks like stuck in an endless kiss rictus.

Bright green contact lenses hiding the irises and forbidding the pupils from dilating give her an eerie empty stare. She is looking at you but seems to be in a drug-induced trance. Look her in the eye and you will be in the presence of a Borg craving to “assimilate you”… Her eye lashes are stiffened with the excess of black Mascara and the rest of the eyelids displays a peacock-tail color palette that reminds you of a “Cirque du Soleil” performer… Minus the talent!

The eyebrows are reduced to a hair-thin line bestowing upon her a Frau Blucher look from Young Frankenstein. Poor thing, if she could at least smile…

Her hair makes you wonder how do the neck muscles cope with all the weight… Add to this the whole works, huge metal and colored crystals necklace and earrings. Thank God, she’s blessed with a pea-sized brain to counter-balance…

I won’t even indulge in describing the rest of the body. All I’ll say is this: When we called the coke bottle “sexy lady” we did not only talk about the shape, we also meant the proportions…

Tight white jeans, tight pink t-shirt through which transpires an even tighter bra squeezing her breasts like a baby buttocks and lifting them up all the way casting a late afternoon shadow over the wavy hills of her belly. Bracelets and rings cover her hands and wrists, producing a percussion cacophony every time she lifts her hand to take a puff of her Super-Extra-Wildly-Slim mint-flavored cigarette. To top it all, she’s wearing flip-flops that came straight from some bedroom. It seems that her feet hurt from all the standing outside the shop to smoke…

Of course, to subtly accessorize it all, the gum. Chewing and clicking sounds place her between a ruminating cow and an old ham radio plagued with interference noises.

She’s bored from the lack of shoppers on that hot spring mid-week day. She yawns every now and then, slowly opening her mouth so wide you could see her panties, so loud, whales do actually answer her song, ending it with a long “Aaaakh ya Allah”!

I step in looking for a pair of black jeans to try on. That was a mistake, a big mistake… Although bored, she was not happy to see me. She was actually finishing a cigarette just outside the shop, with a grumpy face, leaning against the wall, right next to a small poster that promoted anti-smoking.

I walk in. She stays out for some time before she reluctantly decide to follow me in after a frowning grimace. Obviously, the aim was not to help me choose the jeans, but to make sure I don’t steal anything first, and second to insure she turns my experience into a living hell as quickly as possible for me to leave as swiftly as possible. She did have one last cigarette while sending a couple of text messages; one to her boyfriend reminding him to fit the dark fumé on his 1977 yellow BWW 2002 Tii windshields, and another to order a Rami Ayache song as ringtone…

She finally follows me in and starts sizing me up from a very short distance, so short I could smell the nauseating mixture of cheap perfume, sweat, and tobacco. She did not say a word, but I kept thinking she did… Until I noticed it was the chewing. So I said to myself, since she’s there pretending to help, let me pretend to need her. I turn and ask if she had black jeans. She points to the opposite shelf of the store and manages to mumble the word “there” between two chewing gum clicks. I smile oh so cynically and leap to the opposite shelf. There was no black jeans either… Damn! Now I have to ask her again. She was texting again with a smile. Should I interrupt such an “intimate” moment? Hell yeah!

“Excuse me, but I can’t see any black jeans there either”. “No?” She asks, “reverse-bursts” a bubble with her gum (Author note: You know, those bubbles blown inward inside your mouth and then popped?) and continues “look over there” pointing to the display at the end of the shop, right next to the fitting booth. I walk to the display. No black jeans… I walk back towards her like on a death-row and tell her. She sighs rolling her eyes upward (but subtly I have to note), continues texting for a few seconds and then looks at me, or so she seems with her zombie contact lenses, and says “Mmmmm, yeah, we must be out of black jeans!” And she leans against the shelf, chewing her gum louder and looking everywhere except at me.

Fine, fine. I understand. Time to go. I walk out, and while passing by her, she says “Ya ahla!”… It all simply looked like a movie played in reverse, which normally starts with welcome, and ends up… Well… with a cigarette…

Be afraid, this is what most of the sales people at shopping outlets in Lebanon look like and behave. I once asked a saleswoman, in a very reputed outlet, for the price in Dollars instead of Lebanese pounds, she went for few seconds and came back with the answer. When I asked her the second time, she went and came back with a calculator and… gave it to me…

Two lessons:
One: If you can’t handle this job, go and be the personal assistant of some cadaver in a remote cemetery.

Two: Shop owners, while you sit in your air-conditioned offices, behind Jean Nouvel desks surrounded by switched off laptops, mini-fridges and fake antiques, some employee is ruining your business and reputation trying to get a Rami Ayache ringtone to work on his $30 monochrome Nokia!!

And guess what? To hell with black jeans, I’ll stick to my worn out denim.

©2011 Ibrahim Lahoud

Shopping… For a smile by Ibrahim N. Lahoud is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at ilahoud.wordpress.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at htt://ilahoud.wordpress.com/.

SUKLEEN, MOVE OUT OF THE F*****G WAY!!

THE CASE
Long long time ago (No, I’m not Don McLean singing American Pie), the garbage guys used to pick the trash at 5 or 6 in the morning. Loudly enough to wake you up sure, but at least early enough to spare you the stops, traffic jams, stench and the sight of a turtle-lazy dude pushing trash bins like a geriatric.

Today, with the advancement of modern times, Sukleen chooses to clean the city at peak hours, ranging between 10:00 am and noon. And even better, they intentionally purchase trucks that don’t fit in our narrow streets. They leave the city clean of trash, and you of your sanity.

Why? you may ask. Humm Let’s see, we’ll try to explore the different plausible scenarios that force such a “clean-headed” organization to pollute our sanity.

SCENARIO 1
Communication is the pillar of modern days, and Sukleen, who has chosen to use its trucks as communication vehicle, was compelled to perform its task at peak hours. So, when most of us are already going insane over traffic jams generated by Lebanese whom vision of a road is a prostitute working by the hour that they have to “consume” swiftly, Sukleen fills our sight with beautiful ads that speak about a clean green environment.

Fine, but here’s the loophole morons: Your trucks run on polluting fuel. When you create traffic jams, you pollute the environment far more than stinking trash. And for God’s sake, what’s the use of a clean environment populated by drivers with nervous breakdowns?

SCENARIO 2
Sukleen is simply a sadistic organization owned by a sadist who enjoy the sight of a mile-long traffic jam halted behind a garbage truck in the narrow streets of Beirut. So, they hire foreign labor from countries where they sleep during the day and who do not speak one work of Arabic, purchase large trucks to make sure you don’t squeeze in between them and the side-walk and flee, and place more than 4 or 5 trash-collecting bins in strategically located over-crowded areas.

If this is the case, I wish they publicly admit it by changing the ads on their trucks to something like “Watch us clean your city” or “Build yourself a career, watch how we do it!”

SCENARIO 3
The garbage-collecting company is simply dumb! It happens. You may be a large organization ran by morons. I mean look at our government!! Someone must have thought that you really don’t need a PhD to run a garbage-collecting company… Sure you don’t… I rest my case.

SCENARIO 4
They simply want you to bask in the beauty of the nausea-inducing colored bins. Their super-duper marketing team philosophized that the money spent on repainting the bins using a vomit-inspired color palette should secure a return on investment. Solution: Make people slow down or stop for a time ranging between 10 and 20 minutes to appreciate the sight. It is probably the first multi-sensory advertising campaign in the country; the sight of trash, the smell of trash, the sound of trash… and the color of trash…

BOTTOM LINE
A week ago, I was driving down to Gemmayzeh coming from Tabaris. That road is already narrow enough, with cars parked on both sides leaving enough space to drive your car with your side mirrors folded. As I reach the entrance of that street, a Sukleen “large truck” makes it in front of me. As it starts to negotiate the street, it brushes two cars and comes to a complete halt when it hooks the third. And here we are, no way forward, and no way back because of cars that have already lined-up behind me. It took us half an hour to reverse all the cars back and take alternative roads.

Common sense says… Hehe. Look at me, speaking of common sense in Lebanon… Forget it. Probably the business of cleaning the streets is more important than my business in branding consultancy. I must have gotten my priorities wrong.
My one million dollar question is: Who’s going to clean the city of companies and people like that? But then again, what’s the rush?

© 2011 Ibrahim Lahoud

SUKLEEN, MOVE OUT OF THE F*****G WAY!! by Ibrahim N. Lahoud is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at ilahoud.wordpress.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at htt://ilahoud.wordpress.com/.

The Lebanese Mating Dance

A pair of blood-red lips walk into a shisha café, dragging behind them a pair of huge fake boobs that made that typical squealing noise of inflatable balloons rubbing against each other. Tattooed eye brows and fake eye lashes gave her the look of a plastic mannequin. The only remaining genuine part is her brain. It was simply so hopeless, nothing could be done to it… You could actually hear it rattle in a skull covered with  light brown colored hair most of it tucked under an extension. Oh yes, she was for real…

At the most visible table in the Shisha café, alone sits a hairball. Nothing fake here, except everything. 60s’ Grease-style disproportionate hairdo on the front, covers all the shameful parts, especially the brain cavity. Hair gel drips from the tip of a short and shy pigtail. A two days beard that reminds of the early neanderthals with the way it reaches right below the eyes. A perfectly straight shaving-line stretches from the top of the cheekbone all the way down to either side of the upper lip. Mustaches that bring back Russian czars memories adorn the lips and bask in the shade of a nose the size of the Khufu pyramid. The eyes are covered with over-sized mirror-coated fake D & G shades reaching halfway to the forehead.

She’s wearing a white Lycra T-shirt covered with golden and silver words in French: “Me, You, Sexy, Available, Now, Yes…” which revealed a pierced belly button. Tight washed-out low-cut grey jeans cover her lower body, so tight, her bladder, kidneys and most of her intestines are now squeezed between her lungs and spine. The remaining cellulite casually bulges and dangles on either side of the jeans concealing a thick golden metallic belt covered with crystals, more words (English this time) and a Huge “P” for buckle. I tried to figure out what the “P” stood for but had to stop… The location was too suggestive to indulge in guessing… Her feet were squeezed in silver shoes with chrome high-heel stilettos. So high were they that it was probably windy and rainy up there… which explains the brain-rattling. She was carrying a fake Louis Vuitton bag on her shoulder. I don’t know what was in it but, from the way it was carving a groove in her shoulder, you could guess her entire vanity chest was dumped in there.

He was in a fake silk shirt. I am still trying to remember its color palette. It was just too much for someone like me who lacks serious color sophistication. As usual, the first three buttons were loose uncovering a half-shaved chest, a thick gold chain with a cross at the end, and a smaller thinner gold chain circling the lower neck. He’s wearing low-cut dark blue jeans, also very tight, with tears, holes and stitches covering every inch except the genitals, which by the way protruded so vulgarly. His feet were covered with a pair of white leather kickers and no socks. He was wearing a huge gold ring on his right pinky, so heavy it was constantly sliding to the side.

She walks slowly but not gracefully. You could hear the stilettos “clicks” on the tiled floor with every step she took. She stops, locates an empty table right across from his, heads towards it and sits on the seat facing the café entrance. She painfully crosses her legs, sending her kidneys to join the rest of her lower abdomen organs right up there. Now you can understand why all that make up; to conceal the red swollen face!

He’s smoking a Tutti-Frutti flavored shisha in an over-sized tastelessly designed narguileh. With every puff, he lets the heavy smoke out from the left side of his mouth in a thick and narrow stream. He pauses, and exhales the rest from his nostrils in a turbulent cloud lacking the usual aerodynamics due to the thick nose hair proudly protruding.

He sees her…

At first, he inconspicuously slides his eyeballs sideways trying to follow her without moving his head. Hidden under his dark shades, no one could tell he was sizing her up. His eyeballs reach the far side of the eyes and can’t slide anymore… He holds the position without noticing that slowly, his head was starting to move in the same direction. Few seconds later, he was literally staring at her, triggering the typical Lebanese macho set of reflexes:

One, his nostrils expand wide.
Two, his lower lip pushes forward in a prognathic spasm
Three, his left hand unconsciously drops and holds his genitals
Four, one of his eyebrows pushes upward

All done in a very subtle way of course…

Still, she notices… Which triggers her set of defensive reflexes:

One, she shuffles her hair with her hands carefully avoiding to drop the extension
Two, she swings her whole body 45 degrees in the opposite direction
Three, she looks at her watch every ten seconds
Four, she checks her cellphone faking to read a text message

The mating dance has begun. Unfortunately, it will never move beyond a mere dance, because in our “conservative” society, it is considered taboo…

Lebanese…. Aaaaah…. Lebanese…

© 2011 Ibrahim Lahoud

The Lebanese Mating Dance by Ibrahim N. Lahoud is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at ilahoud.wordpress.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at htt://ilahoud.wordpress.com/.