Listomania
8 Things You Can Only Get Away With In Beirut
Surviving Beirut tumult comes with a specific set of reason-defying peculiarities that you’d hardly ever have to deal with anywhere else on the planet. To celebrate the uniqueness of our deeply cherished homeland, we’ve laid them out for you in one article just in case you haven’t been properly filled in on the madness already.
1. Running chronically late to pretty much everything, including your own plans.
And then blaming it on the traffic as you proceed to put on a devastatingly over-emotional entrance no one literally asked for.
2. Selling anything from fidget spinners to bow and arrow in the sheer middle of highway.
I’ve been assiduously and wholeheartedly trying to make sense of this intriguing highway commerce trend for over two years now. Still nothing.
3. Double, triple, quadruple, middle-of-the-road-in-utter-traffic parking.
Because there’s nothing more okay than blocking a whole chunk of the road for other drivers to cater to your supreme personal ‘convenience’.
4. Casually attempting to trace someone’s entire genealogy five seconds after you meet them.
I mean, who wouldn’t want their past entirely investigated by a complete stranger in the course of everyday conversation? How is this considered a brutal invasion of privacy disguised as small talk? Men wen enta? Chou byechteghil bayyak? Addeh ma’achak bl chaher?
5. Driving with your headlights on just because you’re annoying like that.
Messing with people’s eyesight and sanity is just another perfectly acceptable feature of life. The road (and everyone on it) is an inclined slave to your mood.
6. Operating your vehicle like you’re competing for the Dakar Rally title on an hourly basis.
Since we’re on the topic of driving, it is equally important to note that driving in Beirut counts as a competitive extreme sport that you are automatically enlisted in as soon as you step out on the road. Keep an eye out.
7. Jump-crossing the highway with no sign of regret.
Near-death-experience-meets-suicide-attempt got nothin’ on me yo.
8. Resorting to armed violence just because your close-minded self got ‘pissed’ at something.
It just seems like being mildly offended by someone else’s behavior is a legit excuse for just anyone to pull out a gun and most likely get away with it nowadays.
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