On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
***
“There’s a lot of people out tonight–for a bombing night,” my friend said, passing me a bowl of garlic potatoes.
Despite the enormous blasts today in Tripoli, and Israel’s bombing of an area south of Beirut, my colleagues and I–like so many others–hit the town this evening to enjoy a relaxed late-night dinner in Beirut. In crowded alleys nearby, the dance clubs were booming–just like any other Friday night.
After dinner, my friend said he’d take me for a ride on his motorcycle–a short one. Leaving our rowdy neighborhood in our wake, and hugging the coast–the waves whipping the shore in concert with the wind whipping wisps of my hair from my helmet–I knew our midnight ride wouldn’t be a quickie after all. Pulling the bike to the side on a steep hill on the coast, my friend suggested that we take a stroll on what some people call “The People’s Beach” and others call “Hezbollah Beach.” In Beirut, each beach has its own character and “scene.”
We weren’t the only ones leaving footprints in the sand. Two girls in veils holding hands. A young couple barefoot, hooked arm-in-arm. Swimmers in the distance, riding the strong waves of a lopsided moon.
“You know, this is the beach where the U.S. Marines came ashore,” my friend said, as I stumbled in the stand near an empty lifeguard’s chair. After a long day of digesting news about violence to our north and south, I couldn’t stop yawning, as we tried to fill in the empty gaps of our knowledge–about Lebanese politics and our own.
When we hopped back on the bike, I was sure he was going to take me home, but we continued on in the opposite direction–swerving through neighborhoods that many predicted would be exploding tonight in violence–but all of them were calm. Pulling up slowly to an army checkpoint, we were waved straight through by the soldiers to continue our midnight ride–which was now no longer a midnight ride–since the hours were quickly passing.
Soldiers in tanks we passed seemed bored. Some lit cigarettes, others played with their phones. Even the streets of the refugee camp were empty–not a soul in sight–no shimmer of light. Veering from our usual route, we turned the bike around to return to our corner of Beirut.
When we pulled up to my gate, I hopped off the bike while looking into his eyes, instead of the ground–my calf brushing up against the scalding silver surface of the bike’s exhaust pipe.
Grabbing my leg, I fell to the ground–in pain and on purpose–to see what damage the pipe had done. Burning doesn’t bring tears like blood. Some of the skin slid right off–and where it didn’t–tiny bubbles rose to the surface on top of a red and purple welt–lopsided, like the moon.
“Hurry up, go and put cold water on it,” my friend said.
As the guard let me through the gate, I smiled–instead of wincing in pain. Forget bombs, checkpoints, tanks, and machine guns. The danger which caused me pain tonight–was sitting under me all along–heating up for when the time was right to strike. I’d been so busy looking outside of myself–and our metal frame–that I hadn’t seen the threat lurking beneath me the whole time–even though my friend had suffered a more serious scar from that same stealth pipe several months before.
As I watched my friend pull away from the gate, I was glad to see he was wearing long pants. He had learned–through the pain of his own vicious burn–how to shield himself from the slick sting of that vital pipe. A lesson, I guess, I’m just learning.
The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outwards from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Tonight’s ride through Beirut…
