The Bloodiest Gangster in Beirut
Amid an endless war, a writer returns to the Middle East to find that his Syrian friend has escaped the bombs only to be trapped on the front line between fact and fantasy.
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Illustrations by Sage Barlow
“This is an interview with the future gangster of one of the bloodiest gangs in Beirut,” says Habib, and laughs when I place the recorder in front of him. His phone rings. “Allo, eh? Kifak?” and I sit back in my chair.
It is the end of May 2014, and we are outside the Tomate Cerise café, shaded by a ficus tree from the late-morning sun. I can hardly recognize the man across the table as the friend I have known for two years, as if, while I was away from Lebanon, a vortex opened within him and he has been sucked into it.
Habib's slender, twenty-seven-year-old frame has shrunk, skeletal beneath his T-shirt. His skin is bone pale, his cheeks sharp, and where once his jawline was clean, a thick black beard has sprouted. His short-cropped hair is longer and slicked back. A mutual friend says Habib has taken on the peculiar style of a Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighter from the Damascus countryside.
Habib was arrested along Beirut's Mar Mikhael bar strip in April and sp…
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