49. Calling Beirut

As soon as the lesson is over, I run downstairs to Family Mart, the convenience store on the first floor of my building, and buy a KDDI international calling card. I then hop on Azami’s old bicycle, and pedal as fast as I can towards Ōhori Park. The park is one of the few remaining places in town that I can think of, which has public phones set up for international calls. With everyone owning cell phones nowadays, public phones, and the international variety in particular, have fast become obsolete. The last time I personally had any use for one was just after our big earthquake in 2005 when public phones were the only ones you could get through on.

Near the entrance of the park, I find a phone booth. I call up KDDI, tap in the number on my prepaid card, and wait for the dial tone.

As I’m waiting, I look outside the phone booth. Just a stone’s throw away is a playground where young mothers chat with each other as their children climb monkey bars, chase dragonflies, or nibble on the goodies in their bentō boxes. It’s hard not to envy those kids, snotty noses and all. Not a care in the world, they spend their afternoons running around, falling down, getting back up, and running some more. At my age, with the consequences as distressing as they are, I no longer have the confidence that I can stand up, dust my knees off, and keep on going like those kids can. If I fall, it’s really going to hurt.

Sighing heavily, I dial the number of my aunt’s home in Beirut. After several rings, Dita, her Sri Lankan maid, answers.

“Dita?”

“Yes?”

“Dita, this is Rémy. Is . . .”

“Oh, Rémy! How are you?” she says cheerfully.

“I-I’m fine, Dita.”

“It’s so good to hear you,” she says. “Are you coming . . .”

I am hardly in the mood for chitchat. “Um, Dita, is Ammteh Michelin home?”

“Madam?”

“Yes. Is she home? I need to talk to her.”

“No, Rémy. No. Madam is not here.”

Dita, despite having lived for decades in countries where English is the second most commonly spoken language, still speaks with a heavily curried accent. Her Arabic is even worse, far worse than my own, which is saying a lot. Have I not been living in Japan, where the average Western expat even after a decade-long residence still can’t string a proper sentence together in the local tongue, I might dismiss the maid as stupid. Dita isn’t stupid; just dismally average. Polyglots like my Lebanese relatives, I’ve come to realize, are the exception.

That said, at a time like this, I wish my aunt’s maid spoke better English. When a tornado is churning destructively towards you, you don’t want your message to get lost in the wind.

“She’s not there?” It has to be eight, maybe nine in the morning in Beirut. Perhaps she is out picking up man’ousheh for breakfast.[1] “When will she return?”

“Sorry?”

“What time will she come back?”

“Come back?”

“Yes, come back. What time will she come back?”

“No, Rémy. She don’ come back.”

“What?”

“Madam is in America now.”

“America? What’s she doing there?”

“She’s visiting Naila.”

“Perfect! That’s really who I need to get in touch with. Have you got Naila’s phone number?”

Dita gives me the number, but her accent is so thick, I can’t tell if she is saying “two” or “three”. I have her repeat the number to me again before I read it back to her. I double and treble check, but just as I am about to hang up I notice the number has one too many digits.

“Dita, the number’s too long.”

“Too long?”

“It has too many digits.”

“Digi?”

“Yes, it . . .” Ah, fuck it. “Never mind, Dita. Thanks. Bye.”

 

 

[1]Man’ousheh is a popular Levantine dish similar to a pizza, consisting of dough topped with thyme (za’atar), cheese (jubna), or minced lamb meat (sfiha). It is often served for breakfast.

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.

48. Show Time!

It wasn’t until The Zoo opened down the street from my apartment in late 1999 that dé Dale and I finally got to know each other. Although he had been living in Fukuoka for nearly as long as I had, the two of us seemed to be running around in concentric circles. All I knew about the man was a few salacious rumors.

In the dark, too, about dé Dale’s nationality, I resorted to greeting him in English, a “Hey, man” here, a “Whassup?” there, whenever our paths happened to cross. And so, it was in English that we spoke for the first time, curiosity having compelled me to pop over to The Zoo on its opening night.

A row of massive bouquets stood on tripods before the shop bearing congratulatory messages from companies that conducted business with dé Dale. Inside, the shop was crowded with businessmen, friends, staff, and not a few customers who, like me, had been attracted by the commotion.

Dé Dale walked straight over to me, hand out and grinning broadly. “Thanks for coming!”

“Quite a store you’ve got here,” I said.

The Zoo was deep and narrow. At the front of the shop, fashion accessories were displayed: racks upon racks of rings, bracelets, bags and hats. The deeper you ventured into the shop, however, the more degenerate the merchandise became. Outrageous graffiti covering the walls and ceiling pulled you further into the store, where body modification equipment was on display. Everything you could possibly want and more to pierce, cut, implant, stretch or tattoo your body. And in the very rear, in The Zoo’s Holy of Holies, dissipation reigned: every kind of paraphernalia imaginable vied for space on the crowded shelves: pipes, bongs, rolling paper, scales, turbo lighters, and so on. And there in the glass case next to the cash register was a smorgasbord of psychedelics, many I had never before heard of.

“You’re so conveniently located,” I said to dé Dale, giddy as a boy in a toyshop, “I don’t know whether to be thrilled or concerned.”

“Man, you cannot believe what I have been through in the last three days to make The Zoo a possibility,” dé Dale said excitedly. He was standing before a row of dildos, one of which wobbled and churned on the shelf. “Four days ago my realtor found this property, the next day I got the loan and signed the contract. Yesterday, we painted the place and then moved all this stuff in last night. I have not slept a minute in four days.”

“Sounds like a rough week.”

“No! Sounds like a goodweek! A great week for business! There was a chance, I took it, and—boom—three days later, here I am and here you are and here is everyone else and now it’s show time. You saw the sign?”

“The sign? The one out front? Yes, I . . .”

“There’s a reason for that,” dé Dale said, giving his temple a self-congratulatory tap.

Rather than hanging a shingle out front that gave the business hours like practically every other shop in the world, there was a board that said: 

 

Show Time: 11am to ?

 

“The Zoo is not just a store,” dé Dale crowed.

“You can say that again.”

“This is going to be my showcase. This store! This is but merely the beginning, my friend! Merely the beginning.”

There was no way I could have known it at the time, but dé Dale was full on, pumped up with enough methamphetamine to give an elephant a heart attack. I was under the naive assumption that the man rocking on the balls of his feet before me had the stamina of Napoleon who famously functioned on as little as three hours’ sleep a night. And, like le Petit Caporal, dé Dale was also short in stature, even in a country like Japan. What he lacked in height, though, he more than compensated in his physical presence: he had the broad shoulders and powerful arms of an ape.

“Pardon me, but I don’t believe I know your name,” dé Dale said, presenting me with a business card: G. dé Dale, President.

“G?”

“Gabriel, Gabriel dé Dale. Everyone calls me dé Dale. And you are?”

“Rémy,” I said.

“Rémy?” he said. His piercing blue eyes studied me. “You’re American, no? Or am I confusing you with some one else?”

“I am American, American by birth, but I’m half French. My old man’s from Avignon.”

“Avignon. Interesting. And the other half?”

“Lebanese.”

“Ah, Lebanese!” His eyes widened as if his suspicions had been proven correct. “You are only the second Lebanese I have ever met, and you both party. That must be some country.”

“It is. You should visit it some day.”

“I would very much like to do that, but I am . . . Jewish.” Dé Dale’s hair was strawberry blond, cropped militarily short. On his chin he sported a narrow beard, tinged with orange. He looked like the Devil himself. “Now that we’re neighbors, we ought to get together and party.”

“Sure, anytime,” I replied, pulling my own business card out of my wallet. “I usually finish work late . . .”

In a broad gesture taking in the whole of his store, he said, “And you take me for some nine-to-five stiff?”

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.

40. Smart Drugs & Not So Smart People

Windbreaker comes around again and asks if I like traveling.

“Yeah. I go to Southeast Asia—Thailand, Malaysia, and so on—about once a year. And, I try to visit a new country at least once every one or two years.”

“You do drugs when you were there?”

“Pardon me?”

“You do drugs when you were there?”

“Where?”

“Thailand. Did you do drugs in Thailand?”

“Huh?”

“Have you done drugs in Thailand? You know, ecstasy?”

On the bookshelf just behind Windbreaker is an article my friend dé Dale clipped for me from The Bangkok Times a few weeks ago. It describes Thailand’s illicit trade in narcotics, yaba in particular.

“You must be joking.” I say. “Of course, I haven’t.”

“Oh? Why not?” Windbreaker seems surprised.

“Why not? Because I have zero interest in being thrown into a Thai jail is why not!”

“How about Japan, you ever do drugs in Japan? You ever smoke ‘ganja’?”

“Ganja?”

“Marijuana.”

“Marijuana? No. Never.”

“You’ve never smoked ganja?”

“Look, I’d be lying if I said I’d never smoked,” I admit, somewhat apologetically. “In college, you know, I 'experimented' with it just like everyone else. Hell, even President Clinton did. But, no, I have never smoked marijuana in Japan.”

Cross my heart and hope to die.

A taller cop, thinning on top and shabbily dressed, takes a large case off the top of my refrigerator, places it on the dining table and opens it. Inside is a water pipe, broken down into about eight pieces.

“What’s this?” he asks, holding up the Bohemian glass bowl that forms the base of the pipe.

“It’s an narghilè,”I say. [1]

“A what?”

“A water pipe from Lebanon,” I explain, “for smoking tobacco. The tobacco is in the cabinet across from the fridge. Top shelf.”

If there anything in my apartment is suspicious, it’s that pipe, but, rather than pack it up with all the other things the cops are now confiscating, he returns the narghilè to its case and puts it back on top of the refrigerator. You can smoke dope with one of those, not that I’m going to tell them.

The same cop, clearly not the sharpest tool in the proverbial shed, asks if I am Muslim.

“How many Muslims do you know keep a well-stocked bar?”

I have a small shrine of sorts dedicated to St. Max Kolbe—patron saint of, among all things, addicts—stocked with Ron Zacapa Centenario, Absinthe, Bombay Sapphire, Satsuma potato shōchū, Tres Generacionestequila, Pernod, and so on to keep the home fire burning.

He sighs irritably, then, starts hunting through the contents of my refrigerator where, in addition to the usual perishables, I keep vitamins and other supplements on the top rack of the door.

“What’s this,” he asks, holding up a small bottle of filled with a green liquid.

“It’s Champo-Phenique,” I answer. “It’s for insect bites and cold sores.”

He bags it up as evidence. Then, he removes a small box. “And this?” 

“I have rhinitis,” I explain, pulling a handkerchief from my back pocket and honking the klaxon good and loud for effect. “It helps.” Sniff-sniff.

The box contains about a month’s supply of Modafinil, a mild stimulant I’ve been taking for the past three years—I happen to be slightly jazzed up on it this morning. Did I give the truth a slight twist by saying it helped with my rhinitis? Not really. It does help me keep my eyes open when the allergy meds I take daily are trying to pull the shades down.

But Modafinil does so much more, something that I’m not about to let them in on, because, as they say, loose lips sink ships, a fact that is made all the more poignant when your boat is filled gunwale-to-gunwale with plainclothesmen. Modafinil taken with a cocktail of the Cognamine and other nootropic smart drugs will have you soaring like a rocket all night and landing softly as if onto a giant marshmallow. Astonishingly enough, none of them are controlled substances in Japan.[2]

The cop drops the Modafinil into a Ziploc bag to be sent to the lab, then closes the fridge having done his bit.

[1]The names for water pipes vary from country to country. In many parts of the Middle East water pipes are called narghilè (pronounced “arghileh”). “Hookah” comes from the Indian word for the pipe.

[2]“Nootropics” are drugs that are said to enhance cognition, memory, and attention. Many of the drugs mentioned above have since become controlled substances in Japan. (Party poopers.)

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.

38. Passport Confiscated

Windbreaker, who is still crouched down before me, comments on my Japanese: “It’s pretty good. You been here long?”

“Too long,” I answer. “Fourteen years this spring.”

“Where are you from?”

“The States.”

“The U.S., huh? Where?”

“Oregon.”

“Olé . . .”

“Oregon. It’s on west coast of America, just north of California.”

Normally, I don’t miss “home”, but on a day like today . . .

“Ah, California. I know California.”

I have had to endure the very same conversation ten thousand times since coming to Japan. I know what the next question will be before Windbreaker does.

“You don’t, em, . . . look American,” he says, craning his neck to get a better view of the gaijin before him.

“You tell me: what is an American supposed to look like?”

“Well . . .”

“I’m half Lebanese,” I tell him. “Half Lebanese, half French.”

“But you are American?” he says, making a notation on his pad. Many of the cops are carrying small notepads and scribbling away. None of them are the same, though. Not like the standard notepads the FBI in American movies have. Makes you wonder if they have to cough up the yen to buy their own.

“Yes, I was born in America,” I said. “You know, the Great Melting Pot and all that.”

To the average Japanese, it probably sounds like I am trying to pull a fast one by “claiming” to be American. As if the cachet of being a Yank is so great that I would lie about my nationality. If anything, it is an embarrassment, especially with a reckless cowboy like Bush in the White House.

“Can we see your passport?”

“Yeah, hold on.” When I stand up to get it, the older cop in double-breasted suit stops me with a hard tap on my arm. He gives some orders and that annoying little man with the salt-and-pepper hair and dreadful pencil mustache comes over. His name, I’ll learn soon enough, is Nakata.

“Where is it?” Nakata asks brusquely.

“It’s over in the living room.”

“Where in the living room?”

“I’ll show you.”

“Don’t move!”

Nakata gives the other cops instructions to clear out of the way. The longhaired cop with the video camera follows along behind me. Another cop with a camera takes stills: one shot of me pointing towards the living room. Another photo of me pointing towards the bookshelves and cabinet, then one of me opening the cabinet and pulling out the folder I keep important documents in.

When I hand Nakata my passport, he asks, “Have you got any other passports?”

On the urging of a mother too proud of her country and family to ever renounce her own nationality, I have kept a Lebanese passport wrapped in a handkerchief in the side pocket of a pair of shorts along with about three-hundred-thousand yen in euros and U.S. dollars in a suitcase that is tucked away and gathering dust in the back of my closet. If my mother has taught me anything, is that it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

“No, of course not,” I answer.

“We’re going to confiscate this, okay?” Nakata says, agitation rising in his voice.

“Yeah, sure. Go ahead.” I reply and return to the sofa in the back room. Never has it occurred to me to actually use my Lebanese passport. Not until today, that is.

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.