Unidentified Flying Objects may hit your head
Lebanon, Essay, 9/6/1997

The sun is shining, the car drivers are shouting and blowing their horn, stuck in the daily traffic jam. You stroll along the sidewalk, peacefully breathing the polluted air and maybe making plans for the day. Everything seems normal until someone hits you suddenly on the head and almost knocks you out.

When you realize what happened, you remember that you didn't provoke or attack anyone, and if you look carefully around you, you see that no one tried to assassinate you. Your aggressor was something: an Unidentified Flying Object that fell from the sky.

Actually, if you stare at it, you do identify a curious shape that resembles a basket hanging from a rope made up of many colorful ropes tied together. The other end of the rope vanishes at the third floor of a building, where a fat woman in indecent clothes leans out of the balcony. She glances at you without thinking to apologize: you bothered her, for you interrupted a very serious task she was doing: her shopping for the day. (The shop keeper that you didn't notice just had to replace the list the woman left in the basket by the required products and take the money he needed from the same magic basket!)

However, stay cool, all you have to do is cross the street, and walk where no supermarket can be found in the ground floor of buildings. Don't think that this accident occurred to you just because you were walking in a popular area, for this "practical" way of shopping is wide-spread in the whole country and you can see varieties of baskets pending from balconies in the most luxurious streets. The only aspect of this phenomenon that may change is the quality of the rope and the basket, which may vary from a poor simplistic plastic bag to a beautiful, fine -quality straw basket.

Even if tradition is not what it used to be, and even if you pass by the same street in 30 years and if you see that all the buildings are replaced by giant skyscrapers, and if the mini-markets turned into huge malls, do no be shocked if the same basket hits your head.

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