Beirut: In The Heat of the Day

It's been a few very busy days, together with such pathetic internet through-put pretty much everywhere that I didn't even want to try posting. Beirut is like that: the internet, even when it's working, will suddenly slow to a crawl and stay that way for days. Last week the pain actually drove me to call the company, Cyberia (aptly chosen name, were it spelled slightly differently), that supplies my home connection. After the usual transition from Arabic to English or French I discovered that 'very sorry sir, we are having broblems on our system. It will soon be fixed, inshallah.'

There's no 'p' sound in Arabic, so 'problems' becomes 'broblems'. Inshallah means 'hopefully'. It also could mean 'it's out of our hands and may be for the rest of eternity'. And in this case the problem went on for days. In fact, things are still not back to normal.

Of course, there's the cafe I'm currently sitting in, where I often come when the internet gets so bad at home that work becomes impossible. And, at the moment, all is well. The other day, though, things suddenly got really, really bad. To the point where I was debating going back home! The staff kept rebooting the router and the modem and I could see them talking on the phone several times. It finally transpired that someone just across the street in possession of the password had opened up a connection and was hogging all our bandwidth. A new password fixed the problem, but not before about 2 hours had gone into problem-solving.

Anyway, so much for technical issues. In the next day or two I have a couple of new things on the way, but first I decided to do another travelogue. The other day May and I jumped into the car yet again and finally made the long-postponed trip down south to Jezzine. The photos came out quite nicely, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to give a bit of a feel for Lebanon's topography. A lot of people think the Mideast is made up of desert and scrub, as in much of Syria and Iraq. Others might have a biblical image of the low hills and coastal plains of Palestine. Lebanon is quite different from either of these Mideasts, and quite spectacular topographically.

At the same time, as I mentioned in my travelogue to Byblos, there have been lots of changes in the last 40 years and the low cities and small villages of the Lebanon I knew then have given way in many places to large urban agglomerations whose uncontrolled scale dwarfs and overwhelms the natural environment. Fortuantely, it turns out that the road to Jezzine has been largely spared....so far.

Jezzine is the door to the South of Lebanon. It's a largely Christian town located at the head of an enormous valley that stretches northward through the hills and mountains of the Shouf region where I used to live. In fact, most of the trip will run through very familiar territory for me. The first big stop is Baaqline, where I used to live.

The trip begins with a short run along the coast road through the village of Khalde to Damour, where we head east into the Shouf mountains. Here's the coastal 'village' of Khalde, just south of the airport:

Back when I lived here, it was barely big enough to merit being called a village.

A few minutes later we reach what used to be the Christian village of Damour, where we used to stop and buy our vegetables before heading up to Ba'aqline. Damour is a town with a tragic history of its own. After the terrible massacres of Palestinian refugees at Tel el Zaater camp by Christian militias, Damour was overrun during the civil war by forces of the Lebanese left and the PLO. Many of its inhabitants were massacred and most of the rest of its inhabitants were driven out. Since the end of the war many have returned, and what used to be a small village has now become essentially a suburb of Beirut:

Visually, things start to get better as soon as we turn off the coast road at Damour and head east. The matresses look relaxing:

A few moments later, a huge relief. This looks exactly as I remember it, completely unchanged and just as beautiful as it used to be... the banana and citrus plantations of Wadi Damour:

From Wadi Damour it's uphill all the way. Here are a few pics to give a feeling:

Leaving Damour and heading uphill...

And more uphill...

And even more uphill...

Until, from the former village - now town - of Kfar Heem we get a good view of the rest of the climb. Baaqline is just visible at the top of the photo, the slowly rebuilding village of Deir Dourit is below. Deir Dourit was a stronghold of the Christian militias during the civil war. After the assassination of Druze leader Kamal Joumblatt in 1977 - almost certainly at the hands of the Syrians - Druze from Baaqline and other villages descended upon their Christian neighbors, killing several hundred and virtually wiping out Deir Dourit. Like so many things here in Lebanon, tragedy lurks just below the surface, no matter how bucolic:

About half an hour later, we arrive in my old village, Ba'aqline. Incredibly, the place looks almost unchanged:

And, indeed, we are in Druze country:

The view of the hills behind the village is just as green and rural it always was:

On the other side of Baaqline we have the village of 'Ain Baal. I always loved the place because it instantly tells you that the place name is not hundreds, but thousands of years old. It means, simply, 'the spring of Ba'al', who was Yahweh's main competitor in the god business back when. In other words, the place is as old as the Bible!

Next to 'Ain Baal is Semqaniyeh, which also used to be a tiny village. It's now become a suburb of Baaqline, more or less. What Yahweh and Baal together couldn't accomplish, man has done in just a few years. And just beyond, the village of Beqaata was transformed during the war into nothing less than a city. This happened because travel to Beirut was impossible for long periods, so the Shouf needed an urban center of its own to supply the region. Thank god (Baal, Yahweh, Allah) they didn't pick Baaqline:

The new city of Beqaata. What used to be Semqaniyeh is in the distance.

However, Beqaata is really the last place on our trip where the new world has so completely destroyed the old. From here on down to Jezzine the Shouf is very much as it's been for hundreds of years. Minus one clear reminder of the civil war, the statue to the Druze fighters. The interesting aspect is the guy on the right; he represents the religious fighting corps recruited by Walid Joumblatt to defend the Druze lands. Something like the fighting monks of various periods of Christian history:

After 'Ain Baal, Semqaniyeh and Beqaata, it's really the Shouf as it used to be. Here's the view looking south. The last ridge is approximately our destination: Jezzine. Beyond that, the mountains grow smaller and it's probably no more than 20 miles or so as the crow flies to the beginning of the Galilee. Lebanon really is a tiny country:

Sheer cliffs that have doubled for 1000s of years as terraces

In the wadi before the climb to Mukhtara

The village of Mukhtara is the feudal seat of the Joumblatt family - which could also be spelled 'Jounblatt family', 'Junblat family', 'Jumblatt family', and so on. Like everybody else in Lebanon, the Druze used to be fiercely divided into factions. For several decades, since the time of Kamal Jounblatt, the Joumblatts have enjoyed a political ascendancy. The village is one of the best-preserved in the area. Here's the road up to the village from the wadi:

And here's a view of the village from the hillside opposite:

Muhktara

And, a view looking up at the Junblatt palace, much enlarged over the decades by Walid Junblatt, Kamal's son:

After Mukhtara, there's a series of small villages, as the countryside gets starker and more sharply defined. Here's a view looking back north at the relatively green and lush northern Shouf:

And now the wadi starts to deepen progressively into an enormous gorge:

At the same time, the lush green of the Shouf begins to recede as we approach Jezzine. At Jezzine the Shouf ends and the topography with it. Instead of the deep north-south crease of the Shouf, the area beyond it is more oriented east-to-west, with the valley of the Litani river cutting across it. This is a view looking back north from near Jezzine:

Now the last few kilometers, on a newly-asphalted road:

What's wrong with this picture? Oh, yeah...a sheer cliff-edge for
several kilometers and no guard rail!

Finally, Jezzine! And a couple of views looking back north, really quite spectacular:

It's time to eulogize one of Lebanon's truly great scholars. And a poet and artist into the bargain. And a man I had the enormous pleasure of knowing when I first lived in Lebanon, but who unfortunately passed away a year before I returned. This man was Sami Nassib Makarem.

I don't remember how I first met Sami Makarem, but it was during my time as a schoolteacher in the Druze village of Ba'aqline. I think he found my curiosity about the Druze and their officially secret religion endearing, and we both shared a love of traditional Lebanese mountain architecture.

For someone interested in the Druze, Sami was definitely the right guy to meet. To start with, he was Druze himself. Beyond that he was one of the Mideast's foremost scholars of Islamic history, and very possibly the world's leading expert in the history and beliefs of the Druze. In fact, Sami was one of a small group of 'young Turks' whose writings about the Druze began to tear down some of the barriers of secrecy and reveal the truly fascinating and heterodox belief system of this community (I discussed some of this in an earlier post, "Born Again"). Back in the 70s and 80s this was extremely controversial, but over time I had the impression (at a great distance, since I'd long been away from Lebanon) that Sami's approach won over most of the shyyukh, the holders of the religious tradition. And it seems that he died a beloved figure in the Druze community, both for his learning and for his art, his poety and a personal simplicity that was very engaging.

Sami and I used to drive around the Shouf and visit old, traditional homes. Often these were ruins, rather than residences. But it didn't matter to either of us, the amazing nobility of the old homes always shone through. As we wandered around some half-collapsed mountain home, I'd ask a string of questions about the Druze, their history, their beliefs, and so on. To this day I am sure that some secrets of this community are still secret (May assures me this is indeed the case). Nevertheless, I've read quite a few books about the Druze - including some of Sami's - and I've yet to find some fact that he didn't reveal during those conversations. So I think I came away with a pretty good take on the people with whom I lived for several years.

I last saw Sami Makarem in LA in the early 80s. Among other things, we went to Universal Studios with a bunch of American and Lebanese Druze kids of various ages. Since neither of us was particularly into the rides, I used the occasion to pick up where we'd left off among the ruins, and spent my one trip to Universal Studios listening to an explanation of the Druze view of the nature of God.

That was the last time I saw Sami, but a few days ago I felt like I'd come as close as possible when a person has passed on. I came face to face with the man's dedication and determination, and with the astonishing results of one of his life projects.

Among the many ruined places we visited back in the 70s was the home Sami hoped to rebuild in his village of Aytat, in the mountains above Beirut. I well remember wandering around what had clearly once been essentially a small palace but was now an utter ruin. Sami, undaunted, took me from broken wall to debris-filled room, explaining all the while how he planned to transform it, reincarnate it, bring it back from the dead. It was clear that in his mind he already saw the end result, with warm light flooding through arched windows and filling the vaulted rooms. At the time I thought the man slightly mad, if in the best possible way. Last week I discovered how wrong I was.

What happened was that my friend May and I had planned to take a drive down to south Lebanon. Or as close as you can get to it. Given the realities of life in Lebanon, going to the extreme south is 'not a good idea'.

Our plan was foiled, though, by some of Lebanon's more mundane problems: my need to do a laundry vs Électricité du Liban's need to turn off our power. The result was that by the time I'd finished with the washing it was too late to consider going all the way to the south. We jumped in the car and headed out of town without any clear idea of where we were going. Various possibilities popped up and were voted down. Finally, May said, let's go visit Sami's house, which is really not very far.

May's maiden name is Makarem and she is Sami's first cousin, so the idea didn't come out of nowhere.

Before I continue talking about Sami Makarem, I want to digress for a few moments and talk about traditional Lebanese mountain architecture. And this for a couple of reasons:

To my mind it's one of the most beautiful architectures in the world, perfectly rooted in its place, its local materials and the history of its peoples.
While politics has provided endless tragedy in this region for decades, the disappearance of this form of building since the end of the Second World War has been an almost unnoticed tragedy in its own right. With it has gone an entire way of life, close to the earth, rooted in time and place, and completely genuine.

Mountain homes in Lebanon were always built of hewn local stone. They tended towards very simple exterior forms. Here's a good example from Ba'aqline:

Externally, these forms were relieved by rows of 2 or 3 arched windows, by graceful arched balconies, by shapely doorways and by other traditional details. Some more examples from Ba'aqline:

While tiled roofs became quite common in later periods, the earliest examples often had simple, compressed dirt roofs. These had to be recompressed regularly, especially in the winter, to prevent water infiltration. For this purpose, there was always a very heavy roller sitting in one corner of the roof. Here's an example from May and Karma's place in Ba'aqline:

A few more examples of the mountain style:

An old home in Baaqline under renovation.

A nice example of triple arched windows.

Inside, these homes were stunning, with high, vaulted ceilings. The vaulting kept the interior cool in summer, while the thick stone walls kept the heat in during the winter. Here's a beautifully restored example, the home of my old friend Adnan in Baaqline:

It wasn't until I learned how these houses were traditionally built that I understood they were a true example of form following function. Or, perhaps, of beauty following method.

The procedure was time-consuming but made perfect use of local materials. At the same time, it was methodologically brilliant in making use of the idea of what we'd call 'negative space'. The footprint of the house was marked out and leveled. The bearing walls were begun and gradually brought up. As this was done the interior was also filled - with rubble, sand, and the like. The house continued to rise in this fashion until the vertical walls were done. At this point more rubble and sand was heaped on top and formed into the shape of the rest of the interior space; i.e., into rubble domes. Once this was done, the stones that would eventually become the ceiling could be laid on top, ending with the final, cap stone at the peak of the ceiling. The capstone locked everything into place. This process was the province of acknowledged master stonemen, of whom there were only a couple left when I lived in the area. I'd be surprised if today there are any at all.

The process was similar to building a stone archway, but in four directions. If the stones weren't cut and laid correctly the whole thing was guaranteed to collapse of its own weight.

Once the capstone was in place, the walls could be finished off and the space above the ceiling filled, until the roof was filled and flat.

Then came the process which revealed how competent the craftsmen were: all the rubble filling the interior space had to be dug out and carted away, leaving an empty space held up by the vaulted stone ceiling. One can imagine that there must have been times, certainly in the early careers of future master stonemen, when the whole thing came crashing down and had to be restarted from scratch.

When it worked, the final result was spectacular. Here's a couple of examples from Adnan's house:

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Now back to Sami Makarem. When May and I headed up the hill to Aytat the other day I had no idea that the place I was about to see was the pile of stones I'd visited some 40 years ago. And proof that soft-spoken Sami Makarem must have had the determination of ten lesser men, to have succeeded in his dream while simultaneously pursuing a full-time career as a scholar, and artist and a poet.

It was as we rolled to a stop by the house - 'house' is definitely insufficient - that I had a strange feeling of deja vu. Things were so completely changed, however, that it wasn't until we actually entered the main courtyard that I realized it was the same ruin Sami had shown me decades ago.

At this point I'm going to simply add some of the pictures I took, and let them illustrate what I want to say, both about the house and about Sami. Here they are:

Sami's office, next to main house	Sami's office
Sami's grave, still unfinished

View from office	Windows in main house
Diwan, receiving room	Main house
View of courtyard	Window detail

View from main house

Courtyard

Main house, mashrabiye

Courtyard balcony

Mashrabiyeh, enclosed balcony

Both Sami and his father, Shaikh Nassib Makarem, were noted calligraphers. Sami's home exhibits some works by each. I tried to get acceptable photos, but given the low light and glass framing the quality is not very good. Nevertheless....

Calligraphy by Shaykh Nassib Makarem, Sami Makarem's father: