Mounjad al-Sharif was a child then. On school holidays, he and his friends would come for a falafel sandwich, see a movie at the Automatique, and if they had money left, ride the tram home. Beirut’s long, bitter civil war killed Falafel Sahyoun. The store shut down in 1978, when the fighting got bad, and this part of the city became the front line of a divided city, where rival militias installed their snipers. The year the shop closed, Mustapha Sahyoun died. The tram line is long gone, and so too the Automatique. Falafel Sahyoun reopened in 1992, after the war ended — only to split in two in 2006, when Fuad Sahyoun broke away. He refuses to explain why, saying only that it was for his own “peace of mind.” Zuheir Sahyoun points to his brother’s wife. “Pillow murmuring,” Zuheir grumbles. “His woman.” “My business hasn’t been affected,” Zuheir quickly adds. “I have the same clients. More.” Zuheir’s shop bears a blue crown as its logo. Fuad’s has a yellow crown. At lunchtime, people drive up to one or the other. They take away bags of sandwiches, or they scarf them down sitting behind their steering wheels.