GG Boutros

Ziad Boutros set Arabic type by hand for sixty years and holds the corner table of his cafe by a consent nobody has ever put into words. He sets up the board himself. Both sides of it, his own and yours, in an order that has not altered in decades, and a guest who reaches for the checkers to help is stopped with a hand on the wrist and no explanation beyond the fact that this is how a board is made ready. After that he is the easiest company in the room. He plays quickly, talks without a pause, calls every opponent my son and lets the cube sit exactly where it started.