A bunch of friends have asked how close we live to the place where the journalist Samir Kassir was killed yesterday morning. We don’t live very close at all .. Ashrafiyeh is about a 30 minute walk from where we live in Hamra. Our new friends Matthew and Mary Ann live very near, though. I’ve only talked to a few people here about it, and they seem unsurprised .. the Syrians again. Our landlord’s son (who is, by the way, possibly disturbed) told me, “Well, things like that happen here.”

Yesterday, the son in question came upstairs to our apartment, bringing me a big packet of Indian spices. He seems to think that I love Indian food, because he was here one day when I was making chili. He also thinks that people are following him and plotting against him and seems genuinely agitated whenever he talks about it, which is every time I see him. He showed me pictures of some of these guys which he took with his cell phone. Somehow this all started when he began hanging out with a guy he met at Starbucks who later turned out to be a Saudi prince. He complained that no one believes him, not even his parents.

Me: Why do you have pictures of all of them?

Him: So I can document this. I also have locks of their hair.

Me: What? Where did you get it?

Him: From the barber.

We finally got a table for our terrace, so we can start eating all of our meals out there. This is very exciting to me. It is one of the things I pictured when I imagined living here.

I went to the post office today. It costs $1 to send a postcard to the US, so I guess we won’t be sending much mail. Also, I’m not sure that we will get a PO box, which is what we would need to receive mail.

I also met Ibrahim, who runs the extremely small music store across the street. He mostly sells (assuming he ever has any customers) very old cassette tapes. He practically dragged me into his shop and then ran to the corner store and bought me a beer, then told me his life story. He seems a bit sad and bitter and longs for the days before the war when Hamra was bustling.

Right now, Ethan is at our the office of our IP provider trying to sort some issues out. I was there briefly. The office is a tiny, hot, windowless room above a tiny, smoky internet cafe, of the sort where there are only teenagers playing video games for hours on end. It’s Friday, so we might go have a beer in the neighborhood.