Seeing yourself through the eyes of someone else is always a startling experience. Especially if you are being watched at 40,000 feet by someone with a cup of espresso in hand and a pair of red-hot green eyes.
Club-med in the French Alps. Outside it's black and white with snowcats baking the ski slopes wandering in the darkness. Inside it's dinner time with two good-looking young ladies composing lovely French chatter against a large half-empty table. Without even so much as looking at each other both Ram and I instantly dropped into the two empty chairs, hopes in hand. It did not take long for them to learn we are from Israel and for us to realize they were from… Beirut.
Well, Lebanon we knew pretty well, including the particular neighborhood in Beirut where the two young ladies reside… it comes with the trade. I wanted to know how was it to live amidst a raging civil war. They wanted to know the same only about Tel Aviv. At the time, in both cities, cars were primarily used for transportation, yet not exclusively. Every now and then with the right drivers and enough TNT, they would be used as a stairway to heaven… 72 virgins and all. This was no doubt one table in Chamonix where nothing was being taken for granted, least of all the silence in the air. We obviously had a lot to talk about.
Ram locked on the slower target as appropriate, and I focused on the fast-flying Ninet. She was tall with charcoal black hair and hard piercing green eyes. She was beautiful. The kind that sucks the air out of a room when they walk in. Beautiful enough to scare men away. I recognized an air of loneliness stunning women often carry for lack of men feeling worthy to engage. This is not going to be a problem tonight. The topic around the table was what one does when at home and a big Boom is heard. The kind of Middle Eastern conversations outsiders will find hard to follow.
Ninet took the lead explaining that "once a Boom is heard, first thing we do is check the time… if it's around eleven in the morning, we take another sip from our espresso and wait". She paused and took a deep breath "if another Boom follows, then it's ok and all is safe. If not, we would then go to the window to see what's going on in the street below". She looked at me long and hard, trying to figure out if I heard what she was saying or anything at all for that matter. It's a problem stunning women have whereby the other side, for various reasons, does not manage to pump enough blood to his ears and loses his hearing. I, however, stayed focused. "A second Boom?" I asked. She shot a warm smile of relief and carried on, "if there is a second Boom then it is the Eleven o'clock express, and all is good." I obviously looked puzzled. "A couple of your fighter jets running around in the sky making sonic booms and annotating the heavens" she explained, "it's always around eleven, and they always come in pairs (hence the second boom)," she went on, not knowing she is talking to no others then the artists themselves.
A week passed. It was at 40,000 feet due north above the beautiful city of Beirut and supersonic when I thought of Ninet again. How she is having her espresso now, pausing to hear if a second Boom is coming… It may very well be that I just entered her thoughts, and she does not even begin to imagine that the "one of yours" above her now, is actually me. Nor that it's hers truly painting the sky in her window or annotating the heavens, as she chose to put it, ages ago, last week in Chamonix.
In retrospect, I probably should have asked her to go to the window regardless of the number of Booms echoing in the air, and just look up to the sky. It wouldn't hurt if I could see a pair of friendly red hot green eyes looking at me from the Christian quarters of the hostile city of Beirut directly below… on the other hand, who am I to ruin her morning espresso.
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