Welcome to the fried zone: where plastic surgery meets the emotional intensity of Um Kalsoum and Lebanese foodies go on the rampage. This is Beirut: a melee of pop culture chafing at Mid East traditions. In words and pictures, Transit: Beirut is an anthology of complex urban experience. The view is wide: from fiction to photography and everything in between. Rabih Alameddine, author of Kool Aids, meditates on occidental noses on Lebanese faces; Zeina B. Ghandour ponders the dissecting lines of TE Lawrence, Orientalism and a PLO grandmother’s revolutionary milk; novelist Hassan Daoud unpeels Beiruti humor and lifestyles; while journalist Fadi Tufayli reveals a makeshift graveyard at the heart of the city’s psyche.