5. The Best Tunes

The sun blinded me as I stepped out onto Wisconsin Avenue. I headed north-west across Dupont Circle to Adams Morgan. It was plenty of miles. Some angels hate walking. I like it, the fool’s eye view makes everything look different, somehow. I looked at the DC Circulator buses passing from time to time and wondered about the Earthbound and their taste for travelling in silence on subways, trains and buses. Besides it was September 9, quite a few people were on the sidewalks heading for the festival. Adams Morgan day was one of my favorites of the fake religious subtitutes in the USA. The irreligious find an excuse to congregate in folk festivals, where artisan goods are sold by 3rd and 4th generation Americans in fancy dress. And then there’s the music. Latin, funk, salsa, urgent rhythms of heat and… well you get the idea. I’d heard a rumour about Adams Morgan Day the last time I’d been in Washington: I thought I’d find out if it was true, while I made up my mind whether to kidnap the First Lady.

18th Street between Columbia Road and Florida Avenue was closed to traffic. Tourists spilled out of the Circulators. Most looked European: socks and sandals on a crisp sunny day, where Mr and Mrs Edlefsen from Twin Falls, Idaho would have been in matching polyester pants and some kind of windbreaker. The music had been audible from many blocks away. A cacophony of congas, from the two stages at either end of the street. It was before noon. Two bands playing different versions of the same song were performing their sound check. Neither wanted to cede the open air to the other. I hoped that there would be a programme when the festival proper began in the afternoon. Then again, it was a long street and maybe the mass of bodies would absorb some of the sound. One of the bands must have started Black Magic Woman earlier for they stopped playing abruptly on the lead guitarists signal. At the other end of the street, a moustachioed figure segued into Szabo’s Gypsy Queen. I hoped it wasn’t going to be Sub-standard Santana all day.

Two Puerto Rican men began a fight beside a stall selling crude pottery. A large woman, with the stolid expression of a native american slapped both upside the head until they settled down.

‘Choo starin’ at, Chico?’

I tipped her an imaginary hat and continued down the street. Six middle-aged latinos were striding off the stage at the Florida Street end, their instruments discarded on the stage like a defeated army’s weapons. The singer was smoking a home-made cigarette. A patrolman waved the smoke towards his own nose and grinned.

A clock struck 12, although there was no church nearby. I decided to take a look at the Presidents outside Mama Ayesha’s on Calvert NW. Sometimes only the taste of the Middle East will do for an angel. It’s the nearest thing to home cooking, after all. Mama Ayesha’s presence had long since been limited to 2-dimensions on the mural outside her eatery, but the baba ghanoush was still good and I ordered plenty to go with a lamb shank.

The restaurant was empty to half-full. Mostly Lebanese or Egyptian men. Although there were more Syrians than ever I had seen before in Mama Ayesha’s, they hadn’t yet begun to outnumber their fellow arabs. There were no women, save for one or two waitresses. I looked at the framed and faded pages of the Washington Post on the walls. Photographs of beautiful women in 60’s fashions and corpulent men in Brooks Brothers suits looked out of their frozen moments at the tired drapery of Mama Ayesha’s. My food came and I ordered a decent bottle of Château Ksara Syrah to accompany it. I raised a glass to Iggy Loyola and blessed his acolytes for founding the vineyard in the Beqaa. I hoped he enjoyed the company as well as the warmth. St Peter had enjoyed escorting him to the Infernal Machine. The Hellavator’s predecessor was a more mechanical affair, and offered none of the metaphysical comforts of the modern route below. Stop offs on the temporal plane were difficult to arrange or even accomplish. Many annunciations and visitations were made at the wrong moment or even to the wrong people. It was unfortunate that my namesake had stumbled upon a 40-year-old trader having a midlife crisis in a cave in Jabal al Nur. Still, what was done, was done, Archie Gabriel was always fond of saying, according to those in the know.

A woman behind the bar fiddled with the volume of a cheap sound system. A crackling recording of Habbaytak Bissayf filled the restaurant. I listened to Fairuz’s plaintive voice and almost believed that she had loved me in some or other summer. During the second chorus a familiar figure sat down opposite, carefully adjusting loose-crotched pants as he did so.

‘So, Gabe,’ he said. ‘That one at least is true.’

I looked at the sad-faced fellow and asked ‘Which?’

‘I do have all the best tunes.’