THE FISHERMAN AND I

I don't know if he died and I don't know if I want to find out. Each time I visit the north I try to persuade myself to go ask about him. Then I conveniently find an excuse not to. And months pass.

I was so young when we first met. A close friend persuaded me to go with her to Tripoli (Lebanon's second largest city) to eat "the best fish sandwiches in the country" as she simply put it. I happily accepted.

That was probably twenty years ago.

I was getting over heartbreak and fish sandwiches seemed like a perfect idea at the time.

And so she took me to EL-mina, a coastal city in Tripoli. And we ate fish sandwich after the other. There was something seductively addictive about those sandwiches. We were young, and our appetite for food was as ferocious as our appetite for life. For love.

"This is Ayoub, or the fisherman, as everybody calls him", said my friend. And with that simple phrase began a twenty-year friendship.

There, in that small restaurant hidden in a cul-de-sac, I drank endless cups of coffee With Ayoub, the gentle fisherman who never allowed me to write about him in the newspaper. He treasured the intimacy he had managed to create in that small place which all of Lebanon visits since over thirty years.

It is not really a restaurant. Maybe it is a take away space. I close my eyes and try to visualize it. I haven't visited Ayoub in such a long time. And yet, his restaurant is forever engraved in my heart. The walls are decorated not only with fish nets. They are also ornamented with the stories I recounted loudly whilst busily wolfing down the sandwishes. The fisherman would quietly listen to me. A man of few words.

Let's see if I can remember his hidden haven.

Two wooden tables neatly aligned to two walls facing one another. A large refrigerator stands next to one table. A small white sink stands next to the other. There was never any fish smell in that popular fish restaurant. That detail I recall very well.

Ayoub created his secret sauce with ingredients strong enough in taste to eliminate any rancid from the freshly caught fish. He learned the sauce recipe from his late grandfather. None of his children wanted to work in the fish industry, so it is a shame that this delicious recipe will disappear when he leaves.

He once taught a young man how to create the sauce. He trusted him enough to pass it on to him. And then that young man betrayed Ayoub once he mastered it, and left the fisherman to build his own restaurant...with a menu based on the secret sauce. "As soon as he tried to apply it in his new place, he simply couldn't remember the recipe anymore" said Ayoub. That was one of the few times he let me in, somehow.

Years passed and I constantly visited Ayoub. Most of the times, and if the weather was good, he would sit outside the restaurant on an old woven chair smoking quietly. A small smile would appear on his face as soon as he would see me approaching in my car.

I was hungry for his sandwiches. He was hungry for my tales. On love. Mostly on love. I ate a lot. I talked even more. I drank cups of coffee. And smoked from his packets. And yet, I never knew much about him.

His small smile told me he enjoyed my visits. The look in his eyes assured me that I was one of the few people he liked. Ayoub enjoyed his solitude. Perhaps that is the reason why he refused to move to the capital of Beirut to allow more and more people to devour his legendary sandwiches. To make more money. To acquire an even bigger fame.

And then life took me to different roads and my visits became less frequent. The last time I went, his helping young man, salem, told me the fisherman was very sick. He had been ill in the hospital since weeks. "It's that damn diabetes. It has paralyzed my feet", Ayoub told me as I spoke to him on the phone. He said it matter-of-factly.

That was months and months ago. I never had the guts to ask about him again since.

Sometimes, in my mind, I visit his small restaurant and I relive the moments we shared. The stories I entertained him with.

And a small smile appears on my face. Similar to his.

He cannot be dead...even if he has decided that it is time to leave. There are the memories embodied in those yummy sandwiches. There are my stories which will forever haunt the fading white walls.

And then, there is the shadow of that small smile that said so much.