‘At eleven
o’clock, our eyes fell upon the walls and columns of Baalbec, a noble ruin
whose history is a sealed book. It has stood there for thousands of years, the
wonder and admiration of travellers; but who built it, or when it was built,
are questions that may never be answered. One thing is very sure, though. Such
grandeur of design, and such grace of execution, as one sees in the temples of
Baalbec, have not been equalled or even approached in any work of men’s hands
that has been built within twenty centuries past… A race of gods or of giants
must have inhabited Baalbec many a century ago.’
-Mark Twain
Cola is less of a ‘bus station’ than a roadside transportation
market where a jumble of passenger vans convene along a stretch of sidewalk at
one of south Beirut’s major intersections. After the international airport, it
is Lebanon’s second biggest transport hub. But this is a very small country –
scarcely larger than Delaware – and from the sidewalk hub of Cola you can go
most anywhere east or south of Beirut for less than $5. Before the Syrian civil
war, you went to Cola to get a shared taxi to Damascus for the evening. With
the right papers, you still can.
A bustling intersection, Cola lies in the shadows of the one
highway connecting Beirut to the south of the country. Beneath the highway
overpass is an army garrison with two tanks nestled behind an elaborate maze of
sandbags and barbed wire. Facing outward, their guns are passively manned by
men at best in their mid-20s, though no one seems to pay them any mind. Lebanon
has a beguiling mix of checkpoints and garrisons that crop up in the most
unexpected places; but like stray cats, festering green dumpsters and gutted
Ottoman villas, they have become such a crucial part of the urban environment
that no one notices them any longer.
We wait for the van to fill to capacity before departing, which
it does after several minutes. There is a magical, organic efficiency to a
great deal of how people travel outside much of the ‘developed’ world. Whether
your destination is 50 or 500 miles away, it usually suffices to show up at the
bus terminal whenever you please and within the time it takes to have a coffee
and a cigarette, there’s a vehicle heading to your destination for the cost of a sandwich or two. No planning, booking, reserving or waiting involved: it’s a
dogged, emancipatory efficiency I wonder why we don't imitate.
Minutes after leaving Cola we start to ascend the Lebanon
Mountains, the first of two formidable back-to-back ranges that lie between us
and Assad, Al-Nusra, and ISIS. In Beirut it had been a balmy spring morning,
around 75 degrees, but each minute we mount, a new chill sets in. The height of
early spring, one moment the fields are awash in yellow daffodils, the next a
thin layer of snow. From sea level we ascend more than 5,000 feet in the first
20 miles alone. A panorama five minutes ago bathed in light is now shrouded in
dark, foreboding shades of gray.
We reach our first checkpoint after passing a road-sign reading:
“Syrian border: 20 miles” (in French and Arabic, not English), more or less the
distance from Prospect Park to the South Bronx. A man in a black ski mask, a
red North Face parka and a slick black shotgun slung around his shoulder is
inspecting each car. I cannot explain why but I secretly want to be him. Like most
of those who man Lebanese checkpoints, his powers of inference must be strong,
because he’s checking neither ID’s nor asking any questions. Cars come slowly
to a crawl, the driver’s window goes down, and both motorist and soldier give
each other a cursory, understated glance. As if to say: “Not to worry – not
this time.” But who does get flagged at these checkpoints? The 30 cars
ahead of us all passed without a single one coming to a complete stop.
Once past the road-block, we round the bend and are met with a
dramatic panorama: a vast, green fertile plain of arable land parceled out in
perfectly fitting puzzle-pieces and dotted with modest dwellings. Enter the
Bekaa Valley, Lebanon's breadbasket and cornucopia, this mountainous mini-state's
very own Garden of Eden. At 1000 meters (3,280ft), it has the country's most
propitious agricultural climate and grows the bulk of its fruit, vegetables and
spices, not to mention hosting more than a dozen world-class wineries and the
Middle East's biggest production base of cannabis, hash and opium outside
Turkey. Just behind it to the east lies the anti-Lebanon mountain range, many
of whose peaks are already on the Syrian side of the border (seen above). Looking down and
you’d never guess a politicidal war was being waged 10 miles away; from here
the valley’s a paragon of natural perfection, the Goya Promised Land, a veritable
Lebanese Shangri-La.
Perhaps the only thing as impressive as Lebanon's wildly
variegated topography across very short distances is the political-sectarian
diversity that accentuates them. Within minutes of leaving the mostly Sunni
working class areas around Cola (whose streets are often plastered with
the sleazy octogenarian mugs of Saudi royals) for the more prosperous
hills, you're immediately met with political Maronism. One moment there are billboards for Samir Geagea, the egg-bald
Maronite Christian warlord who was Lebanon’s only political-military
leader to be imprisoned for his role during the civil war (1975-1990) and who’s
currently gunning for the presidency.
A block later is a bakery with a massive poster of Dany Chamoun,
the British-educated civil engineering son of President Camille Chamoun
(1952-1958) who was assassinated with his (German-born) wife and children in
1990. Chamoun had led the (Maronite) Tigers Militia in the early years of the
civil war, until the more dominant
Maronite militia, the (Phalangist) Kataeb, liquidated it in 1980. He had also been a close advisor to (Maronite
Christian) General Michel Aoun, today Geagea's bitterest rival in the
struggle to dominate the country’s increasingly small and fractious Christian
community for control of Lebanon’s presidency, a post that only Maronite
Christians can accede to.
Further into the mountains beyond Beirut's hilly, well-heeled southeastern
suburbs, one passes through a series of villages draped in posters for the
Future Movement (FM), the predominantly Sunni political party founded by former
PM Rafik Hariri, arguably the most cross-confessionally respected leader this
country’s ever had. After his assassination by some probable combination
of Syria/Hezbollah in 2005, the FM's leadership - like much of Rafik's
fortune - was handed over to his woefully poorly whiskered son, Saad. A billionaire Saudi citizen and sore loser, he's been more or less wallowing
away in Paris ever since being ousted from
Lebanon's premiership in 2011.
Over the first mountain range and into the Bekaa Valley, we find
ourselves in completely new political territory. The
first visible signs of political orientation are of Amal, a Shia
militia-cum-political party whose principle patron has historically been the
Syrian regime (whereas the H-team has always looked to Iran). More secular than
Hezbollah, it has been losing ground in the Shia community to the latter for
decades – but can at least still claim the country's Speaker of Parliament, the
Sierra Leone-born Nabih Berri.
Amal is Hezbollah's older, louder, prouder, scrappier, better
shit-talking second-string quarterback: with a growing beer-gut and a part-time
gig at the mall, it's not the star it once was – but if public displays of
thuggery are anything to go by, it’s still a force to be reckoned with. Indeed,
the first several miles into the valley are dominated almost exclusively by
Amal insignia and the banner of their favorite son, the Iranian-born and
Qom-educated cleric and philosopher, Musa
al-Sadr.[1]
The deeper you go into the valley, the less orthodox the
political forces that make their presence felt. First is the upscale antique
furniture dealer plastered with the swastika-like flags of the Syrian Social
Nationalist Party (SSNP), the pan-Syrian political movement founded by a
Sorbonne-educated Greek Orthodox intellectual in the 1930s that militates for a
'greater Syria' spanning all of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine
and parts of Turkey. Accused by its detractors of being fascist – not in
the least for its nail-pulling-pinball-machine-looking flag – the SSNP has been one of the Syrian regime’s closest allies
within Lebanon since the late 1970s. A secular ally of Amal and Hezbollah
within the pro-Syrian March 8th movement, hundreds of its men and
women are said to be fighting in Syria as we speak.
A few minutes later we pass through a small but bustling Palestinian
camp that’s clearly under the control of another Syria-backed splinter group, the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).[2] Opposed
to negotiating with Israel, they have been at loggerheads with Arafat, the PLO
and Fatah, the faction controlling the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West
Bank, since the late 1960s. Nonetheless, they’ve maintained a strong presence
in many of Lebanon’s most desperate Palestinian camps.
_____________________________
The valley itself is a thing of
extraordinary beauty. The day is sunny and brisk, the air sweet and cold. As we
plunge deeper down its narrow country lanes, cigarettes lit, windows down and
sliding doors ajar, an endless stream of vineyards and rich red fields of recently
ploughed soil roll past. The sky’s a stunningly honest shade of blue – the kind
you only see when falling-in-fatuated or skipping school in early April. Little
white puff-the-magic-creamball kingdoms of dancing clouds hover over each
mountain range to the left and right, a bittersweet reminder that however much
he’s forsaken the rest of the region, the Good Lord above still loves the Bekaa.
Yet the signs of war and social
breakdown still surround us. The first is the shop selling shishas exclusively molded
in the shape of life-size AK-47s. The second are the ubiquitous junkyards. One
moment a fleet of eight black armored Mercedes flies through a checkpoint ahead
of us without slowing down; the next moment, we’re traveling past 100-meter junkyards
of smashed-in, bombed out cars on both sides of the road, often stacked 4 and 5
upon each other.[3]
Sporadically located, these apocalyptic scrapyards are scattered throughout the
better part of the road between Chtaure, at the valley’s entrance, and Baalbek,
our destination. Thirty seconds later we pass an old fleet of abandoned city
buses left to rust in an overgrown field. On the left is an old
rusted train car on an abandoned, moss-covered patch of track, inoperative
since the civil war, and lingering in what looks to be someone’s front yard.
The deeper the minivan flies
northward through the valley, the more pronounced the presence of Hezbollah.
After leaving Zahle, the valley’s largely Greek Orthodox provincial capital, the
lone north-south road is soon billeted with giant 25-foot cutouts of various
Iranian and Lebanese imams and ayatollahs, roughly the equivalent of Shiite
archbishops and popes, to put it crudely. Out there on the horizon, in the
road’s median for every traveler to see, looms a giant black-and-white waving
cutout of Ayatollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and spirited arch-foe of the Great Satan.
Though you wouldn’t know it from taking
a cursory drive, the valley’s also home to one of the region’s largest human
catastrophes. Since the start of the Syrian civil war – if either of those
adjectives can be said to still apply to the conflict – more than 400,000
Syrians, often arriving with but the clothes on their back, have taken up
residence in the Bekaa, a valley of roughly 750 square miles: an area smaller
than Cook County, IL. The fortunate ones are festering in UNHCR camps,
makeshift tents in which they faced a particularly brutal winter of massive
snowstorms, sleet, rain and ice.
Off in the distance, sequestered
between vineyards, fertile fields and tidy villages, are rows of miserable
off-white hovels, each emitting a thin stream of dirty black smoke from
numerous make-shift fires (often burning tires). The minivan screeches to a
halt and, as I gather my thermos and Tupperware to make room for the corpulent
older woman getting in, I make eye contact with two small, smiling children
peering out from behind a window facing the street. Their hair is a buoyant,
deep, dark red, their eyes bright and green, their faces dirty.
_____________________
There’s another checkpoint as you approach
the entrance to Baalbek. Again, soldiers in their early 20s sit
smoking in silence behind piles of sandbags flanked by 4ft red, green and white oil barrels painted the colors of the Lebanese flag and presumably filled with
cement. Arching over the actual checkpoint is a newly constructed,
hollowed-out, ersatz roman colonnade, a sad reminder of former architectural
triumphs. Not to be dismayed, for little do we know, the single greatest
structure these eyes have laid sight on is just around the corner.
Descriptions of the ancient city of
Baalbek must be reserved for more competent writers. To put into words the
wonders of the temples of Jupiter, Venus and Bacchus is harder than describing
the ecstasy of opening a fresh pack of jelly bellies or the joy of walking
barefoot in the vacant lot after a mid-summer’s afternoon thunderstorm, the wet
viscous mud squiggling through your toes like giant earthworms coming up for
air. Before the beauty of Baalbek one can only remain silent, or giggle, or put on garrulous airs. Anything but actually do it justice.
Once inside, you have the entire
city to yourself. Sure, there are a few French[4]
girls snapping selfies in the distance and a lone Lebanese family, but
otherwise the ancient grounds are yours and yours alone. Immediately to the
east is the anti-Lebanon mountain range, snow-capped and looming like a giant white
tortoise. To the west, a vast yellow and green carpet of trees, grass and
flowers as fresh as a new pair of patent leather Jordans. Behind them, the
Lebanon Mountains, a soft but jagged streak of snow-white sheets that
blanket the balconies of heaven’s slums. But before you can kiss the earth in
gratitude, a shot rings out in the distance.
Rat! Tat! Tat! Tat! Tat! Another firefight’s begun. Off in the distance a string of automatic gunfire pierces
the late March mountain air; the shots are getting closer by the second. I run
to take cover under the columns of the temple of Bacchus, eerily aware that the
lone security guard doesn’t seem to be paying the commotion any mind. A mortar
explodes over the lone colonnade that remains of the temple of Jupiter, leaving
behind a small black billow of smoke that soon dissipates in the sky just above (yes, I have a very underwhelming picture to prove it).
It’s a strange and terrifying
cacophony of sounds, a surreal sensation – seized beneath a ubiquitous ring of
explosions and automatic gunfire from the confines of an empty, ancient city
where not a soul can now be found. But suddenly, after two or three minutes,
silence, then normality – the hum of old cabs creeping up the hill; the call of
the mosque; the song and dance of distant birds.
___________________
I stroll into town to have a look
around. It is quaint and peaceful, the sun is out, the streets are lined with
beautiful old beat-up Mercedes, the makeshift plastic tabletop cafés are crammed
with contented old conversationalists. At the town’s junction, a giant fading
billboard of Bashar al-Assad in camo and sunglasses, standing next to the
affably lisped and bearded Hassan Nasrallah, general security of Hezbollah. I
pop into an antique store to see what the gunfire was all about. “Looking for
postcards? Hezbollah t-shirts?”
The shopkeeper is friendly, in his
late-20s and fluent in French. I ask about the battle that just took place.
“Don’t be silly – that was a celebration, my friend! People always fire their
guns in celebration.” What happened? “A man died. A good man.” Who was he? How
did he pass? “He was a family man, the father of many. A good man.” Yes, err,
of course, but who was he? And how did he go? “He was… a good man, you
know, a family man. A loving husband,
neighbor and father. In Lebanon, people fire their guns no matter the occasion!
A birth, a marriage, a death. When a dog or cat or cow is born – we fire our
guns!”
Several blocks away I stop in another
antique shop. An elderly man is watching a church service on television. The
shop is dusty and sparse, the shelves scattered with batteries and old
religious relics. There are several beautiful faded prints of Baalbek, old
postcards blown up and framed on the wall. “How much is this one?” The old man
hesitates. “Ahh… that… hmm,” he hesitates. “Afraid I only have one of those.” And
this one? “Ah, that one! I love this one.” He points to an old handsome Ottoman
mansion in the picture. “The Palmyra Hotel! Finest place in the country. You
know, it’s just around the corner. The Emperor of Germany stayed there.” He
grins with the rustic nostalgia of an old maid. “Wilhelm himself came to
Baalbek and stayed at the Palmyra.” So it’s not for sale? “Afraid I only have
one of those…”
I board a minivan down at the
entrance to the ruins and sit in the far back. From the other side of the
world, a valley, a mountain range, a different realm: we depart for $5 back to
Beirut. Several miles later, we pick up a soldier. He’s pimply and baby-faced,
no more than 19. He sits in the back with me. I glance in his direction as he
pulls out a pack of cigarettes, Winstons. He offers me one; the bus is packed
with women and children, but I feel the obligation to accept. He grins and
offers me a light. I dig through my bag and offer him an Oreo; he kindly declines.
A few minutes later we reach a
checkpoint and have to pull over. An older soldier opens the door and starts
collecting ID cards. All I have is a Missouri driver’s license. The adolescent
soldier and I are still smoking our cigarettes, heads halfway out the window in
the back of the van. The older one looks at my ID and scoffs: where’s your
passport? The younger one, my companion, looks back, nods his head and winks at
the officer. As if to say, “Don’t worry ‘bout it. Tard-re's with me.”
[1] Of a
moderate and ecumenical mind, Sadr arrived in Lebanon in 1960 from Iran to lead
the Shia community of Sour (Tyre). He is chiefly remembered for being a
tireless advocate of the country's disenfranchised Shias, particularly in the
south. Revered for having eschewed the sectarianism that first led to, then
exacerbated, the Lebanese civil war, he mysteriously disappeared after flying
from Beirut and Libya in 1978. While some say Qaddafi had him killed over a
theological disagreement (the cleric accused of being too pedantic within the
walls of the presidential palace), others say that Yasser Arafat, whose PLO was
then at odds with Shias in southern Lebanon, asked his old friend Brother
Leader for a little favor, and the latter obliged. The Martin Luther King Jr.
of Lebanon’s Shias, his death remains unsolved to this day.
[2] An
offshoot of the original, secular, Marxist-Leninist PFLP created by the
Christian Palestinian George Habash in 1967. Deeming the PFLP too beholden to
wealthy Palestinian intellectuals in exile and their petty Marxist theoretical
concerns, the PFLP-GC soon broke from its parent in order to pursue strictly
military, rather than political, objectives.
[3] Granted,
it is also like this Beirut. Near my place of work are several bombed-out buildings
overlooking a muddy field containing nothing but recent-model luxury cars. This
being Beirut, next door is a body shop for totaled vehicles. An SUV is “parked”
on the sidewalk, a large, bloody outward-facing intrusion in the windshield
where the driver’s head collided with the glass.
[4] Quechua gear always gives their
national identity away
