I was up bright and early to head out to northern Lebanon, more specifically Jbeil (Byblos) and the Mt. Lebanon area. Even at 7 o'clock the weather here is muggy and hot. If the breeze wasn't so forceful I would have sweated through yet another T-shirt. At around 7:30am we boarded a bus, the bus had Reagan era orange curtains, barely functional air vents, the bus had seen better days, when MTV was new. I sat next to a very well educated Turkish girl who worked with the Washington Institute, we had a good conversation about a wide variety of topics, and listened to CCR and Journey on my headphones (That's right Lebanon, Don't Stop Believin'). We were also "blessed" by the fact that we both have low blood sugar, so I guess we had each other's back.
The bus headed up the coastal road past Downtown Beirut, the seaport, Rabieh, and up the (in)famous Jabal Libnan (Mt. Lebanon). After living in Colorado I was much more comfortable with the change in altitude, less humidity in the air, and cooler breezes one would get in the mountains. The mountains here are truly spectacular; I can only speculate what they may have looked like in the 17 and 1800's when the first Victorian Europeans started to explore the area, but I am pretty sure there weren't many concrete high rises.
To the Jeita Grotto! To get to Jeita travellers have to board a cable car. The cable car is a no-frills ride that goes over a small stream bed and through a valley lined with very green trees. When it gets to the cave complex you go through a small turnstile and into the cave. The cave complex is of course dark, but also cool and misty. The combination of those things makes me understand why so many aesthetics and mystics would often become hermits in the complexes. Inside the cave had a nice little walk way and lights pointing at all of the marvelous stalactites. Further on there was a boat ride through the cave. The water inside the cave is very cool, I would often put my hand in to feel it or throw some on my head. Even though the water is not very deep, the lights placed into the water make it have this very Caribbean feel, even the sand on the bottom is white.
Following the boat ride, we were coerced to watch a movie that reminded me of those 1950s made for school, Mcgraw Hill productions, "From the makers of Duck and Cover: What You Need to Know About Reds and 'The Bomb', its, Caves and Stalactites a New Frontier!" (note: I just made that little bit up, I'm sure you get the idea) To top that off the theater was boiling, I must have been perspiring so much that I lost at least 3 gallons of water. After the movie we took "the train," a more or less hyped up gasoline powered golf cart pulling carloads of my fellow students to the small petting zoo of native Lebanese animals. For people who know me, I love to play with any animal that comes within a mile radius. Because of this, I had a ball harassing the grown and baby Shami and Mt. Lebanon goats, with whom I played with for a few minutes.
We left Jeita and started to hit the same altitude I was used to in Colorado, about 6-7000FT. We then drove off the paved road onto what looked like a deserted dirt road, lined with wild mint, mountain flowers, and some wild herbs. We were in Faqra, about 45km from Beirut. Faqra is home to the world's highest Roman temple, and the largest set of ruins in Lebanon. The ruins were very well maintained albeit they were fenced off with a rusty chain link fence. There were the remains of columns, an old church, and the most spectacular of all, the columned entrance to the temple remains, the pyramid shaped roof has long disappeared, but the splendour of the entrance columns was somthing Nero himself couldn't have imagined.
The area around the temple was virtually empty, save for the few lizards that were basking in the heat and my tour group. I climbed to the top of one of the Roman (and later Byzantine) walls to enjoy the view of the mountains. The mix of colors is almost Tuscan, with reds, sepia, green, and many hues of gold. The hills here have a mix of sepia and reddish soil. there are some grains, herbs, and piles of sharp straw (I say sharp because they can penetrate a sneaker) dotting the landscape.
Just up the hill from Faqra are the world famous Faqra ski resorts. In Lebanon it was popular to say that in spring you could be bask in the sun at the beach in the morning, and in half an hour's drive go skiing. Even though Lebanon is currently experiencing a heat wave, I could easily see how beautiful the area could be with a little snow.
We continued to drive to the north and stopped to view the natural stone bridge (jusoor al Hijar) at Kfardebian. Some of villages that line the roads here are something out of a story book. They are dun colored, some have red tiled roofs, in the Christian villages you can see Lebanese Forces symbols and shrines to the Virgin Mary. Sometimes out of nowhere you see a modern looking house/apartment building in the middle of nowhere, empty, as if a family of vagrants were squatting in it for the past 10 years. Around the villages there are terraced hills, many different types of fruit trees, ranging from lime, pomegranate, orange, figs, to a variety of apples.
Up in Jabal Libnan you could definitely see the "tribal" breakdown of the people. Since the 1850s the area had been fought over by the Druze and the Christians. In 1860 the Druze massacred up to 10,000 Maronites, Greek Catholics, and other Christians. Currently, much of the Druze are represented by Walid Jumblatt's PSP (Progressive Socialist Party) and many of the Christians belong to Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces. During the 1975-1990 war the PSP and LF fought incredibly bloody battles against one another to control the mountain. At times the Druze would massacre the Christians, and other times Christians would massacre the Druze.
The more I experienced life in the mountains, I could see how certain sectarian values were in turn brought by those villagers to the bourgeois capital of Beirut. Mix materialism, religious fanaticism, and provincial views and you have a healthy reason why you can always tell which sectarian neighborhood you are in because of the posters that line the walls. The mountains are a kill or be killed type of area. You could hide out in them for weeks, and no one could/would find you. The villages seem quite self sufficient. They remind me of micro-city states in the hills; Supplying their own food and social functions in times of peace, militias and communal defence in times of war.
As we continued driving the tiny, winding mountain roads, I was astonished to find an all Shia village near Kferdiban. Older women wore the Iranian chador, a few younger girls were in Western clothing, for the most part it was a conservative village. Young children came out to gawk at the bus, in one case a 7 year old boy threw a rock at the bus. The village was complete with Amal and Hizbollah flags, posters of Hassan Nassrallah and Samir Kuntar, and a small mosque decked in yellow and green sheets. (yellow and green are the colors of Hizbollah and Amal respectively). Past the village were a set of small waterfalls and springs. The springs were fresh but I wouldn't drink from them. In Lebanon I have noticed many people care about preserving the environment, but many villagers, even when its within their self interest, still don't care. For instance, there is a small sitting area where one can have a soda near the springs. The covered women would wash dirt and filth from the floors into the very streams and water lauded as crisp, fresh, and scenic.
To the villagers the small "cafe" was the perfect place to scam a few extra lira, they tried to charge 2000 L.L for a coke (that's about $1.30); of course, the cokes are bought by stores for about 250-500 L.L, I'm guessing a bit of the profit went to Tehran, so I argued with the shrewd little boy selling the cokes and got 2 of them for 1500, I guess it does pay sometimes to have a university education! I guess I also had another laugh considering they were selling Coke, Coca-Cola in turn sells A LOT to Israel. Oh irony, thou hast smiled upon me.
Apart from the Coke, irony is always present no matter where you turn in this county. Old enemies are friends and sometimes friends are enemies. In the village I mentioned there were both Amal AND Hizbollah flags, however, in 1985 Hizbollah and Amal (both Shia groups) fought countless bloody battles in what was refered to as "the War of the Camps." Right now the PSP and the LF are allied in the March 14th grouping. The PSP used to be one Syria's strongest allies, now Jumblatt (often called "the fox" for his unabashed realism in politics) is completely anti-Syria. Henry Kissinger was off by a few hundred miles when he did his dissertation on Realpolitik, instead of analyzing von Metternich, he should have analyzed Jumblatt.
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* Next post will be on my trip I made to Jbeil.
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