His interest and excitement are piqued by this. He can see it himself on the streets. Both the trash and discontent are spreading. More and more groups are joining in and airing their grievances at the corruption of the state. Soon it will be only the army defending it. And maybe not even that. He sees the graffiti and hears the slogans echoing when he heads home from the office in the evening. At the same time, a couple of streets over from where the demonstrations take place, life continues as normal. Maybe that is how revolutions start, he thinks. Maybe you hardly even notice them at first. Or maybe the Lebanese are just so used to turmoil that for them this is nothing.

‘I’d love to help you,’ he straightens up. ‘If you need someone to go to the demonstrations or meetings and report back. I can…’

Frida holds up a hand to interrupt him. ‘Stay away from the government district,’ she says. ‘I’m being serious, we cannot afford to have our intern get caught up in something.’ She sighs. ‘That’s the last thing I need now. Please, just focus on the receipts.’

The air rushes out of him again, and he nods in defeat. Frida returns the nod and disappears into her office, already a phone pressed to her ear.

*

At least the box of receipts offers him something to do. He deciphers the smudged print on the thin slips of paper and sorts them chronologically before attaching them to letter-sized paper. There’s no use thinking about how this task is something for an assistant and miles away from what he thought he’d be doing here. Better to see it as one assignment among others, and do it to the best of his ability. One day they’ll notice him and let him prove what he can do.

And on Saturday… On Saturday, Yassim is coming back.

*

His evenings have started to fall into a pattern. He leaves the embassy around six and heads on foot back to Mar Mikhael. He can kill an hour that way. On his way home he buys two small shawarmas or a falafel, which he eats while walking. Sometimes he stops at a cafe or bar, orders a beer and tries to read a few pages of The Tragedy of Lebanon, but usually he heads straight home to his apartment and sits on the balcony watching something on Netflix until it’s time to go to bed. He’s counting the days until the weekend.

Three days left. Two. One.

*

On Friday, all of Beirut is full of rumours of an uprising. They say the demonstrations will be even bigger this weekend. Everyone will be there, the discontent is shared by every group now: Christians, Shia, Sunni, Palestinians, Armenians and Syrian refugees. It’s not just the middle class any more: everyone is tired of it.