“20th Century Habbibi.”
— Me, by way of T. Rex

“I’d go the whole wide world just to Habbibi.”
— Me, by way of Wreckless Eric

HABBIBI I:

There are Habbibis everywhere. This is one of the things I have learned.

There are Habbibis on trains. Habbibis behind counters.

Habibis smoking cigarettes outside convenience stores. Habbibis who give directions and Habbibis who give you cigarettes and Habbibis who cannot help you but seem genuinely sorry about it.

There are bank Habbibis, hotel Habbibis, street Habbibis, temporary Habbibis, provisional Habbibis and men who look extremely promising from fifty meters away but turn out, upon closer inspection, to be no Habbibi of mine.

Oh Habbibi Habbibi Habbibi you’re fine, but Habbibi you’re no Habbibi of mine.

Habibi is not a word anymore. I understand that it was a word before I got hold of it. It is now an all-purpose descriptor for people and things of all kind. I apologize in advance to Arabic.

It is now a lexical system.

A Habbibi is somebody who makes the world briefly less difficult.

That’s it.

You’re broke. You’re sweating. Your bankbook has betrayed you. Your hanko has vanished. You have dragged your suitcase halfway across Kyoto for reasons that seemed compelling three hours ago. You are beat.

You are hungry. You are thirsty. You need a cigarette. Bad.

You have reached that peculiar point in the day when every automatic door, ticket gate and escalator appears to have developed a personal grievance against you.

And then somebody does one decent thing.

Nothing enormous. He holds the door. She tells you where the elevator actually is.

The guy behind the counter understands your terrible Japanese and does not make a production of it.

Some glorious bastard gives you an entire pack of Marlboro Reds when you have almost no money.

Habibi

My Habbibi. You motherfucking Habbibi of mine. Be my Habbibi for all time.

You don’t earn Habbibi through greatness. Greatness might actually work against you. Nobody needs another great man. History is crawling with great men, and look what they’ve done to the place.

A Habbibi is smaller.

My Habibi is local.

A Habbibi is the guy who sees that you are having a bad day and, without knowing anything about you, makes it three percent better.

Three percent is enormous.

I know because some days I have been living on three percent.

Of course Habbibi status can be revoked just as quickly as it was granted. There is no tenure. No due process. No appeals court. One minute you are Habbibi, my Habbibi. The next you are not.

Habbibi Habbibi Habbibi this time…

You’re still no Habbibi of mine. Habbibi.

HABBIBI II:

There are other Habbibis.

Paul Westerberg, a.k.a. Pauly Paul the lead singer of the Replacements is a serious Habbibi. He’s is one glorious motherfucking Habbibi that’s for sure.

He had his moments of depression. He talked about suicide. Oh Habbibi. Before all shakedown, Habbibi stop it. Nevertheless, he carried on. Thank god Habbibi. Oh my Habbibi.

Give him his props, Habbibi. Habbibi.

Habbibis III-IV:

Lemmy Habbibi.

Mr. Motörhead himself. Oh Habbibi.

Now, I don’t know enough about Lemmy it’s true. That’s all right. You don’t have to know everything about a Habbibi to recognize one in the wild.

Lemmy looked like a Lemmy. And a Habbibi. RIP Habbibi my Habbibi. There was no second Lemmy. Nobody at the factory said, Yeah, give me another one of those. 

They made Lemmy, broke the mold, smoked whatever was left of the mold, plugged a Rickenbacker into an amplifier approximately the size of Luxembourg and got the fuck out of the way. Habbibi, play the ax my man.

Habbibi rip it up.

Habbibi had the mutton chops. The mole. The boots. The hat. The cigs. The bass slung over his shoulder like it was not a bass at all but some kind of industrial equipment he had been licensed to operate under an obscure British law. Habbibi. Chill.

And that voice.

Not a beautiful voice. A Lemmy voice.

That’s better. Habbibi you’re bizarre. Habbibi.

He was in Hawkwind. He got thrown out of Hawkwind. Fine. Habbibi. He went and made Motörhead. Better Habbibi. He spent decades making the music he wanted to make, at the volume he wanted to make it, which was fucking loud. Naturally. Habbibi crank that motherfucker up to 110. Good god Habbibi. Settle down.

And he kept going.

That’s the Habibi part.

Not because everything was good. Not because everything he did was admirable. Not because surviving automatically makes anybody wise.

Because the motherfucker remained unmistakably himself. Habbibi.

Paul Westerberg did too.

Different Habbibis, same genre.

Pauly could disappear into the basement, get sad, get strange, write something devastating, come back upstairs, fuck around with the Replacements and occasionally set the whole fucking building on fire.

Lemmy just seemed to be there.

Same Habbibi. Year after year. Decade after decade. The world changed. Lemmy kicked it. RIP.

Habbibi

HABBIBI IV:

Krispy Kreme Habbibi

Habbibi, Habbibi, Habbibi it’s fine

Habbibi you’re no Habbibi of mine

Shut the fuck up, Krispy Kreme.

Fuck you.

Fuck off, Krispy Kreme.

You’re too delicious. You’re too damn nice. You’re too damn tasty, baby.

There’s no reason for a doughnut to behave like this.

A doughnut should have some structural integrity. It should put up a fight. I should bite the doughnut and the doughnut should, at a minimum, acknowledge that an exchange has taken place.

Not you you punk.

You melt on my motherfucking tongue, Habbibi.

You’re barely food. You’re an event. A glazed little hallucination. Somebody took flour and sugar and oil and bad judgment and engineered a small edible pillow that disappears six seconds after entering the my mouth.

Habbibi

And the Original Glazed? That’s the one.

Fuck off.

Don’t put cereal on it. Don’t put a fucking candy bar on it. Don’t make it purple. Don’t make it Pokémon. Don’t put twelve additional Habbibis on top of the original Habbibi.

Give me a hot one.

Give me the glaze.

Give me that sweet, sweet cream. Powder cream, baby. Of course.. Nice one Habbibi.

And then you put twelve of the motherfuckers in a box.

Why twelve?

That is irresponsible.

Nobody needs twelve Krispy Kremes. Nobody has ever needed twelve Krispy Kremes. Twelve Krispy Kremes is not a food purchase. It is in fact an Habbibish situation. Whatever that means. Habbibi oh Habbibi you are a Habbbibi of mine. I guess.

Habbibi.

Dedication:

To each and every Habbibi around these days. You rule my Habbibi. And yes Habbibi, you are, after all, still my Habbibi. Habbibi.