Amy’s Journal

Sunday morning, we took a rickety bus through the desert to Homs. Once there, we intended to take a minibus to Hama, but found that we were at the wrong station. An old gentleman sympathized and patiently explained in Arabic that we needed to go to a different station, and that we could take the city bus that had just pulled up down the street. As this was sinking in, he determined that we were not entirely convinced, and led us to the bus, told the driver where we wanted to go, and told us how much to pay. You simply cannot stay lost in Syria, someone will always come and help you find your way.

We crammed onto a minibus and headed to Hama. We found our hotel by reasoning that we should be walking downhill, since the center of town is near the Orontes River. Hama is the fourth largest city in Syria, and it was bustling. I peered into a dark tub of water in front of a shop, and a man dipped his hand in and pulled out a big, wriggling fish to show me.

We checked into our hotel and went to wander around to take in the scene. Hama is well known for its norias, or water wheels. These (or versions of them) have been here since the 5th century and are still in use to scoop water out of the river for irrigation. They only turn for part of the year, though, and are not turning now. You can find norias all over the world, but the biggest ones are in Hama.

Hama is also known as the site of a massacre by the Syrian government in 1982. Government troops came in to beat down a Muslim Brotherhood uprising, and beat it down, they did. Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 people were killed, and most of the old town was razed to the ground. There is only a small section of it left, which we explored in about 15 minutes. There are no memorials or even any real acknowedgement by the Syrian government. This happened when the current president’s father, Hafez Assad, was in control.

Expect this to be some sort of major justification for going after the Syrian government, should the Bush Administration decide to really do so. There is precedent for this with taking down Saddam Hussein– “he gassed his own people [the Kurds]”. True, but the U.S. didn’t care about it for well over a decade, until it served their purposes to do so.

I digress.

On Monday, we decided to visit Krak des Chevaliers, one of the world’s finest crusader castles. T.E. Lawrence claimed it was the greatest castle in the world. Ethan had a castle book as a kid in which this castle was prominently featured. We could have made the trip by public transport, on a series of minibuses, but we decided to have the hotel get us a taxi and driver. Some other guests, a couple from New Zealand decided to come along with us, so it ended up being pretty cheap. The Kiwis were pretty interesting, being over 3/4 of the way through with a 2 year long journey around the world. We heard of their adventures on the taxi ride. They encouraged us to spend some time in Buenos Aires, which we are inclined to do.

The castle is quite well preserved, and you can climb and wander freely. The area itself is absolutely gorgeous with rolling green hills. In some of the valleys we passed through, I found myself looking for hobbits or unicorns. A fitting end to our last mini-trip (Ethan’s 5th and my 7th) to Syria.

This was our taxi. Fantastic.

We have been in the Middle East for 10 months and finally made it to the desert this weekend. We even saw a few camels (the sort that are paraded around for tourists). Before we moved to Lebanon, I’d say the second most common ill-informed comment that we got was one presuming I’d be fully veiled and riding a camel around on sand dunes. The most common misconception centered around thinking that we were moving to a war zone.

Anyhow, on Friday, we went by minibus to Damascus and then took a bus straight to Palmyra, an oasis town in the Syrian desert. Palmyra is known for its ruins, mostly old temples and some funerary towers. The ruins are pretty spectacular, but I have to admit that I am lately unfazed by the sight of yet another Roman column. Still, it was great fun to wander around the site, up to a ruined castle, and to climb one of the towers that used to contain tombs. I do love the desert.

As the town is in an oasis, there are also huge orchards of palm dates and olives. We wandered along the lanes, peeking through gaps in the mud walls at picnicking families. It was my first time in a small village in Syria, and even though these people see many tourists, the children still call out “Hello, hello!”, and many of the adults, too.

This family held up babies for the photo.

Yesterday was beautiful again and I spent a chunk of time on the Corniche.

I really wish I had an SLR camera. The zoom on my point and shoot is pretty weak. When I was out on the terrace yesterday, I watched an old man and a child having a long conversation, calling out to each other from different balconies. I love this sort of balcony life. Neighbors greeting each other, women calling down to the man with the vegetable cart, throwing a canvas bag down on a rope to give him money and collect her new purchase.

This morning we are making our last trek to Syria and we will be gone until Monday night. Our visas expire next week. Where we are going is still being discussed, but we will first go to Damascus. From there, we will either leave right away to one of the spots we are considering, or possibly spend the evening in Damascus, depending on how late it is when we get there.

Yesterday we rented a car and attempted to drive into South Lebanon, the former “Security Zone” occupied by Israel until May 2000. The borders are still maintained, and officially, foreigners need some sort of special permit to visit. Ethan and I have been there twice without such a permit, though the first time was over 3 years ago and the second time we accompanied a resident of a village in the region. We decided to just turn up and try to visit without one.

It didn’t work out, and we were apologetically turned away at 2 different checkpoints. We were traveling with a friend who happens to be a journalist with a lot of Iraq stamps in his passport. I thought he might be turned away because of this (Hezbollah doesn’t appreciate uninvited foreign journalists running around in the areas they defend/occupy) but we didn’t even make it that far in the process.

We were disappointed, as it’s a very interesting area with several unique sites, but the weather was exceptional and we were enjoying just driving around through the rolling hills looking at villages. We decided to take sort of a back way to Qana, another place we wanted to visit, but we got a bit turned around. We finally hit a dead end just above the Litani River. The road just ends, though you can see where the rest of it used to be. We realized that the road and bridge across the river were likely destroyed during Israel’s invasion or subsequent occupation of the area.

The end of the road.

We are lost.

We turned around and asked for directions back to the coast in a village called Kfar Sir, and half the village got joyfully involved in helping us out. One guy drew all over our map and implored us to visit him the next time we are in town.

[Small tangent: Upon googling “Kfar Sir”, I learned that the village is known for its progressive composting methods. If you have been to Lebanon, you are probably well aware that it has major waste disposal issues. Just last week, a dump in Saida collapsed and sent debris as far north as Turkey. The leaders of Saida have declared a state of emergency now that all of that waste is being pushed back onto their shores. It’s probably not a good time to go swimming here.]

After having lunch in the Sur/Tyr port, we drove off toward Qana. We wanted to visit Qana because it is the site of a massacre – Israel bombed a UN camp there in 1996. Many locals had taken cover there from ongoing bombing, and over 100 Lebanese civilians were killed. We eventually found the former camp as the sun was setting. There are some memorials to those killed, including Fijian UN officers. This UNIFIL camp, now shut down with its ruins home to quite a few squatters, was a base for the Fijians posted in Lebanon. Qana is also one of the possible sites where Jesus turned water into wine.

The guy who followed us around the site insisted that this is an Israeli tank, even though it is Russian made. It seems more likely that it is Syrian.
UPDATE: It makes a lot of sense, as someone commented, that this could be an SLA (South Lebanon Army) tank. So in a sense, the guy was correct in saying that it’s Israeli, since the SLA was more or less controlled by Israel.

I found this mural rather poignant. It seems to have been left behind by the Fijian soldiers who painted it out of homesickness. Our “tour guide”, who followed us around the site vaguely explaining things, said that someone wrote “Breakdance” because the Fijians used to breakdance all of the time. I have no idea whether there is any truth in that.

Today is rainy, and the khamseen dust has returned. Actually, maybe today’s rain is washing it away. There are tremendous gusts of wind which cause a lot of racket blowing all of the balcony curtains around. I had planned to go to the park with a friend and her kids, but the weather isn’t cooperating. I finished reading a really excellent book yesterday and have started on another, about “new germ theory”. Perfect rainy day reading. It hasn’t rained much lately, as we have eased out of the rainy season- I have even had to start watering the outdoor plants for the first time since late October.

The talks among Lebanon’s leaders temporarily stalled earlier this week. I think they are going to try to start again on Monday. Apparently, they were going nowhere and then Walid Joumblatt went to Washington D.C. and started carrying on and asking the U.S. government to get (more) involved. I’m not relishing the thought of more pressure in the region from the Bush Administration. Have I mentioned that practically all of those involved in the talks were major players during the civil war? Where are the new Lebanese politicians?

In retrospect, we probably should have gone to the Cedars as much of the snow is already melting in Faraya. It’s sort of amazing that apart from the traffic getting out of Beirut, you can actually arrive in a ski resort in less than 40 minutes. We had a nice lunch sitting outside in the sunshine. Spring has definitely come to Mount Lebanon.

There was still a fair bit of snow, but it wasn’t fresh and we weren’t too inspired to play in it. We headed to the ruins near Faqra (a private ski resort). These ruins are Roman according to the internet but Greek according to our Lonely Planet. As is generally the case in Lebanon, you could climb all over the columns. There were also a lot of fantastic rock formations, and it was all very stunning in the (patchy) snow. We climbed on the rocks and then I caught a tiny and brilliant green frog. Spring, definitely Spring.

This is the smaller temple at this site. It’s dedicated to Atargatis, a Syrian goddess. Later it was used to worship Astarte.

Confidential to NAC: Look closely at this photo.

We briefly stopped in at one of the ski slopes, but found the pulsing techno at the bottom to be irritating. We ended up driving back down the mountain and then north to Batroun, a town that none of us had spent much time in. We wandered in the old town, with its renovated stone Ottoman houses. We drank some sugary lemonade and walked down to the old Phoenician sea wall. As we rocked along the rocks, we noticed swarms of these weird pillbugs that could also run in and out of tide pools. There were thousands of them.

The sun was setting, so we headed to a cafe and had coffee or beer, nuts, and carrots. One of my favorite things here is that if you order a beer or wine, you are also presented with nuts of different kinds and sometimes carrots. The carrots are salted and marinated in lemon juice. In this way, you can pretend that drinking a beer is somehow healthy– a little protein, a little Vitamin A.

We had an uneventful drive back to Beirut, if you can ever call driving here uneventful. Drivers here insist on turning 3 lanes into 7, which often slows things to a halt. In the States, highway driving can put you to sleep, here it is like a precarious dance.

We dropped the car off downtown, and then proceeded to walk through the completely shut area. All of Solidere has been secured for the meetings going on in the Parliament building. This means that every business, every cafe is closed and will be for a total of 7-10 days. It was like a ghost town, with soldiers everywhere. A gaggle of apologetic ones searched our bags as we passed down one street. Just kids, like everywhere. We had to walk a fair distance in order to find a service, there were no cars or people anywhere. So strange to have the “heart of Beirut” utterly silent on a Saturday night.

UPDATE: Ethan pointed out that is is weird that I wrote this whole long post and didn’t even mention that we went with friends. That was partly inadvertent, but I am always reluctant to say much online about people who don’t know they are being written about. Anyhow.. these new friends are really great, a German couple who are fun to be around. It was a real pleasure to spend all day with them.

This week has been fairly mellow and uneventful for me, which is not a bad thing. I’ve been reading a lot and spending time on the Corniche most days. A friend came over and cooked us dinner, which was quite nice.

Last night, we went to a Spanish restaurant with three friends. Solea turned out to be a nice place and we ate in the lovely garden in back. One of those at the dinner was a journalist who spends most of the year in Iraq, so he had plenty of recent stories. He thinks Iraq might be an okay place to be in 8-10 years. Sigh.

Afterward, most of the group went to Torino for a beer or two.

Currently, there is a series of high level meetings taking place to try to resolve many of the political differences that threaten the peace here. Being discussed are the future of Lahoud’s presidency, whether or not Hezbollah can remain armed, and of course issues to do with the Hariri investigation. Most people don’t think that anything is really going to be resolved, but it might at least temporarily calm things a bit. Apparently, the whole downtown area where the meetings are taking place has been forced to close down for security reasons, but I haven’t been over there to look.

Tomorrow morning, Ethan and I and a couple of friends are renting a car and driving to the mountains, probably Faraya and nearby. The aim is to get out of town and play in some snow. Originally, Ethan and I planned to ski, but once we started calculating how much it would cost us (especially since I have never skied in my life and would have to take lessons), we decided not to do it.

This is from early afternoon on Friday.

This is from early afternoon today.

These are photos from Friday, when Katy and I walked the Corniche and then went up on the balloon. It was my 3rd time up, but they recently moved it several blocks away, so I was able to have a different view, mainly of downtown. The third picture shows Solidere and the still razed Martyr’s Square. The weather was glorious, as it had been since we returned from Greece. Ethan and I have decided that if we are going to go skiing, we absolutely must go next weekend.

Yesterday, we were sort of amazed by the interesting warm fog that descended on the city, but I just read that it is actually the beginning of the khamseen winds. These are duststorm winds from Egypt and Libya, and luckily they are not supposed to linger for too long here in Lebanon (khamseen means 50 in Arabic, and the winds last for about 50 days every year in North Africa).

Last night we had our friend, Bjorn, over for dinner and we were able to eat out on the terrace- finally. Afterward, we went to our local and had a few Almazas. Our bartender friend discussed the political situation with us for some time. He thinks that civil war is almost impossible, partly because he says no one has tanks or stockpiled weapons. Of course, there is Hezbollah, the PFLP, and the Lebanese Army (who are all armed), plus Syria and Iran would have no difficulty introducing more weapons. He believes that the situation now is very different from the one in 1975, the year the civil war began.

And it does seem impossible that war could start again here. Everyone is against it, the protests and rallies are peaceful, and people go about their daily business– shopping, strolling on the corniche, taking kids to the park, sipping coffee in cafes and on balconies, chatting with neighbors.

Katy is our 9th friend to visit us in Beirut (we have the coolest friends in the world). Her trip here is to be short; she leaves late tonight after only about 4 days. So far we have mostly been hanging around in Beirut- the Corniche, the beach, a little shopping, dinner in the evening. Yesterday we went to Tripoli and to Byblos, which was fun. Today she has requested that we go on either the hot air balloon or the teleferique so I guess she wants to get airborne. The weather has been glorious and warm all week and we are finally able to sit out on the terrace again.