Adonis Diaries

Two Nights Out in a Row (continue 3)

(Written on Saturday, May 22, 2004 and posted on October 25, 2008)

Raja Haider, a student in my class, got fiancé a month ago. He invited me for a Saturday night out for the birthday of his fiancée Zena Wehbe.

Raja picked me up at the Virgin Mega store in Downtown Beirut.

Zena is a beautiful, slim, rather tall and friendly brunette. Raja sings opera, prefers Pavarotti over Placido Domingo, plays piano, speaks Italian.

He has also enrolled in a German language course that lasted two months. His father is a manager in the ISO Company and Raja follows him all over Europe during Summer.

It turned out that Zena and I were borne on the same date, May 24. With a couple dozen years interval, Which corresponds to a recent national Holiday: The liberation of South Lebanon from the Israeli occupation in 2000, without any pre-conditions.

Dinner was at the Mandaloun in Achrafieh.

The Mandaloun is a comfortable place, open, rather roomy with white lighting. A gorgeous, heavy and cylindrical chandelier was hanging ominously over our table. A huge screen was covering the whole front wall for the projection of video clips.

Zena got her birthday cake with 4 sparkling candles and I shared with her, along with half a dozen customers, the well wishes of the establishment.

I suspect no “happy birthdays” songs were deemed “chic”, and so they were skipped with no exceptions.

Present in Mandaloun were Nidal Khattar, a current student in my class,

Tarek Gemayel and his girl friend Tracy Mattar, both of them studying law at the St Joseph University,

And Malda, Suzzi ,Chantal, and Mahmoud who graduated last year from the Lebanese American University of Beirut.

And Peter Daniel, from a family in the coffee business and owner of a chain of coffee shops “Coffee Najjar”. And finally Robert.

Suzzi was hopelessly and very much in love. The blue eyed and blonde Chantal was mildly in love. Malda is still a mystery.

Nidal had a car wreck a month ago and suffered multiple injuries and still having health complications.

He failed to take “The Risk Assessment” course last semester, His father is a HVAC contractor in France, Spain, and Italy and also planning to expand into the Huns territory…

Nidal is motivated by Raja to get fiancé summertime

Raja claimed that he is proud of his achievement: Most of his gatherings are a potpourri of friends from all religious affiliations.

He met Zena six years ago when he was dating Zena’s girlfriend. Zena displaced her friend in the affection of Raja. Her former friend is still scheming to separate them.

Zena used to wear corrective glasses and Raja convinced her to laser her corneas. The operation lasted seven minutes for each eye and was done at the same setting.

Evidently, the corrective operation was successful, but for the unavoidable cigarette smoke that still itch her eyes.

The dinner is not filling.  Dinner in the “L” bar was not filling too. I ordered some kind of pasta with hot tomato sauce.

“Black Label” whiskey was the drink of choice; with a few exceptions of white wine for the ladies.

Nidal offered me a Gauloise full-flavor cigarette, and I noticed that, this night, my own box was relatively full. Raja smoked Gitane Light. He remarked that his cigarette flavor and mine are basically the same.

The singer Haifa Wehbe is supposed to be a regular at Mandaloun, save for my night out. Domage.

Knowing that whiskey could have the potential of riveting me to my comfortable sofa, I did not wait for the customary timing to start dancing.

While awesome video clips of Madonna and Michael Jackson were booming on the screen and, as soon as I noticed bodies jerking in their seats and hands waving and clapping rhythmically, I invited Malda to dance.

She said that it is not yet the right timing and she was right: The video clip projections had just stopped but she did get up. We rocked and shaked on some background music.

The singer had to preempt taking the stage ahead of schedule because the whole gang started to join us.

I did not sit down until 3:00 a.m. Time to finish a last cigarette and leave.

I believe that I worn out the whole gang.

How could they imagine the old man to be that energetic and fit to carry on.

When I came back home, I finished my night in front of the TV till 5:00 a.m.