When Mr. N got close to Armenia Street, which led to Daoura Circle, he started reading the signs of the shops that were crowding in around him. He liked that they were written in Arabic, Armenian, English, and French, and sometimes in Sinhalese, which was Suwarna’s language, and Amharic and Oromo—which is what Aryagash and those before her spoke—and Hindi, Nepalese, Filipino, and so on, down to the languages whose identity he could only guess from the faces of the people in the shop, or from the types of commodities on display in their refrigerators or in the boxes spread across the pavement.

At Daoura Circle, which got its name from a large roundabout, Mr. N craned his neck to take in the full panorama. The bustle around him had reached a climax; he was harried on every side. There were wooden carts, their goods on display; buses headed for all corners of Lebanon, hunting for passengers and filling the seats, one by one; gigantic semitrucks; private cars as well as taxis. To say nothing of the vendors, pedestrians, and day laborers; sandwich shops, fresh fruit-juice shops, and narghile shops, exhaling their smoke since morning; coffee machines; shoe-shiners; gas stations; money changers, Western Union, and Cash Express; and shops for making inexpensive internet calls. There were buildings with enormous signs reaching high overhead and also discount clothing stores, where each item cost five thousand lira, two went for ten thousand, and the third was free …

Mr. N’s head was spinning. He was coming to understand that traversing this place on foot was not at all like passing through by car. He made a sudden dash across the street, pursued by car horns as well the curses of blotch-faced drivers, and ducked into a narrow side street with no sidewalks. Noticing a group of noisy young men crowding together ahead of him, he hesitated briefly before pressing forward. He took courage when it became clear to him that they were only looking at the goods of an African street vendor they had crowded around as he showed them the contents of a leather bag filled with lighters, watches, and leather belts.

“How much for this Rolex?” asked one of the men.

“Twenty-five thousand,” said the vendor. “Or two for forty. Did you see the Lanvin belt? It’s genuine leather and only costs ten thousand.”

“Where are you from?”

“I’m Muhammad. From Sudan.”

“Listen, Muhammad. If I take a Rolex watch, this S. T. Dupont lighter, and a Lanvin belt, how much would that be?”

“Fifty-five thousand.”

“What! I’ll pay you thirty, not one lira more.”

“No, no way,” said the vendor, who made ready to leave. The others got involved in the haggling, then, and after a little give-and-take, they made a deal for forty thousand.

The buyer was a young man in his twenties with a splendid build, whose features Mr. N didn’t get a good look at. “What’s all this stuff for?” one of his companions asked.