3June2015 Two Hours with Yacob

“55 years wasted.  What is there to show for it?”  That’s a heck of a perspective given the number of wars alone Yacob has survived.  He didn’t seem very grateful.  Instead he was bitter.  Not the answer you expect when you ask a man about his life, especially a believer.

Honestly he looked a lot older than his self professed age.  Five and a half decades had given his face the texture of eight wale corduroy, especially around his eyes.  Years of chain-smoking Winston knockoffs hadn’t helped matters.  Day after day behind the taxi’s wheel in the often congested and always stressful traffic of Beirut had taken their toll as well.  Yacob was much older than his birth certificate indicated.

For over an hour, in a bumper to bumper, at times bumper on bumper, logjam, my driver railed against the, social injustices, financial woes, political corruption and even the food quality of his homeland.  To make matters worse, he got lost trying to find the ancient coffee shop I had my sights on.  How could a eighty-one year-old caffeine purveyor be this difficult to find!  Surely he would blow a gasket.  Rather he looked to me to see my reaction.  Rather than getting angry I just smiled.  “Maffi mushkala,” (No problem) I said, “Let’s go somewhere else.”  He couldn’t believe it and he actually smiled.   

For another hour he told funny stories, slapped me on the knee and talked about how happy he was to have me in the car.  To top it off, rather than taking me to my next destination, he pulled up to a coffee shop and forbid me to part ways from him without allowing him to buy me a real cup of coffee. 

As I bid him adieu, Yacob clasped my hand like old friends, gave me a business card, on which he scribbled his home phone number, and pled call him when I came back to town. 

Not sure what happened in our brief time together that changed Yacob from grumpy old man to jovial, friendly jokester but I think it had something to do with being willing to listen, laughing off getting lost and sharing a good cup of coffee together.  Maybe those three things could go a long way to creating peace in the Middle East?