Baalbek and Beirut

Despite all warning, Baalbek was a surprise. As our taxi rounded a bend in the Chouf Mountains and five sets of groggy eyes widened at the ruins that had replaced the drop to the left, none of us were prepared for what we saw. To say that the five twenty five foot, freeze topped, marble Doric columns that can be seen from the road are an understatement of the beauty and size of the temples at Baalbek is justified. The vast chiseled blocks of stone scattered about the ground, and the fresh smelling mountain flora creeping and poking up through and draping off the masonry serene in one another’s company, each as content with the presence of the other as though they were friends for thousands of years was a sight for smoke filled eyes. The shift from the choking fumes of Damascus and the leaking diesel smell of our taxi to the soft, fresh, lush mountain air a thousand metres above sea level may have played a part in our amazement. The sun setting over the far side of the temple as we entered may have played another but an hour spent wandering amongst the rocky crumbs of Bacchus and of Venus was never going to be enough. It was the most more-ish of places. I would have pitched a tent and spent the night if I could. Certainly no civilization has been keen to give it up. It has seen itself transformed from temple to citadel to palace through its vast lifespan and there is no question as to why. It is amongst the most beautiful places I have ever visited. It is impossible to understand how alien the smell of a city is until you have visited its antithesis, this magnificent testament to Roman engineering, the infrastructure of which is still serving the people of Baalbek nearly two and a half thousand years after its construction. Until the turn of the century it was the Roman canals that delivered fresh water to every house in the town, a source of wonder to travellers through the middle ages, and until now it is the ruins that fuel the tourism supporting the local economy.

Talking about his ruined castle in Spain, Matthew Parris describes the problem of maintaining the spirit of a ruin in its restoration. He argues that there are two routes open to the restorer, the first to preserve the spirit of decay that gives the ruin life, and the second to fashion it into an ape of its complete image. In Baalbek the former policy has had breathtaking results. It dominates every aspect of its surroundings aesthetically, architecturally and economically and it is an imposing rebuke to the transience of our attitude to material possession. The temples in Baalbek took four hundred years to build from stone quarried within sight of the buildings themselves and are still standing well over two millennia later, if not complete then quite spectacular as ruins. Now they are strewn carefully across their ancient site, columns rising to the left and deliberately placed sections of carving or lengths of fallen pillar lying in the path of a walking tour of the site. It forms an oblique but efficacious instruction on the beauty of the ruins and salient points of the architecture, as it slowly draws you across the site and back to the exit. It is a remarkable piece of masonry and a talented piece of restoration and undoubtedly worthy of all accolades to date.


Beirut. Having arrived late, around seven, and not managed to convince our taxi driver to take us to the hotel we planned to stay in – he knew ‘four stars hotel, little moneys only forty dollar’ – we wandered across the central downtown area on our way to Gemayzeh, just to the north west of the centre. The recently re-established Place de L’Etoile with its beautiful cobbled streets and coffee shops circling round its continental clock tower, was deserted. The number of people on the streets was barely double the number of policemen sporting machine guns. The barriers were down at the entrances to the pedestrian area, as is usual for an evening, but each one was manned by two more soldiers and each corner that followed each length of road had another troop guarding it. The troubles of Pierre Gemayal’s murder, three days before, were still heavy on the conscience of the city. It was as though we had arrived in a gap between the sound and the echo, and, everyone was waiting. He had already, three days after his death, been incorporated into the poster campaign that tracks all the roads in Lebanon with pictures of the country’s political assassinees and the words, “Lan Nansee…”, ‘We will not forget…’ The Lebanese, usually so happy to party, so ready to move forward, have not forgotten. I hope very much that the quiet of the city was respectful, and certainly I did not feel any sense of fear. Even the soldiers on street corners and the traffic calming slalom that was set up outside the bar we had settled in, to protect people on their way home in the early hours, had a sense of precaution about it, perhaps also respect, but not dread or anticipation. The city is full of aides-memoirs. The brutal crater left by the bomb that killed Rafik Hariri, has been preserved as was, cordoned off as a reminder. All around the capital are large black posters with his picture and a counter, ticking off the days since his death with the words in Arabic, “the truth for the sake of Lebanon”. On Friday it had reached five hundred and forty nine days. Likewise the infamous Holiday Inn hotel on the cornice, home to hundreds of snipers during the civil war and now little more than a shell, still stands tall next to the pretty, pink Intercontinental Phoenicia. The one riddled with bullet and shell holes, the other decked out with tiny but beautiful gardens, lace curtains and stunning sea views. The contrast is stark but so is the balance of politics and pleasure in Lebanon. The nightlife, the escapism, is incredible. Whilst much of the city’s usually buzzing clubs and bars on Monot Street were largely empty, the strip past our hotel in Gemayzeh was absolutely packed and indeed we were turned away from several bars that were overcrowded before we found one to settle in. For many it seemed to be a usual Friday night and tables were still ordering champagne and vodka by the bottle but around one thirty two o’clock people began to filter out and head home. It seemed that even for the hardy few, all-nighters on the day of a political funeral were not the done thing. A few places, we were told, might remain open but ‘with the political situation earlier in the week’ things were a bit difficult. Lacking the stamina, or the will, to find out what people would be doing in those places we followed suit and rolled home.

The next morning we returned to the centre, to Place de L’Etoile, and on a sunny, warm November morning, it was deserted. The only other people we found were shop keepers and three English, Arabic students from Damascus who live around the corner from us in Bab Sharqi. Again the army was out in force. It is difficult to tell whether it felt like a city cowed, or a city in mourning, or a city under siege because I would prefer to say it was none of those, but whatever happens, it is a city changed for the time being. The spirit that had begun to pick up again after the war with Israel has ebbed, if only temporarily and it is increasingly clear that the scars of political assassination shall not be borne so much by the city as by the people who live in it. The city remains fascinating, and beautiful as ever but for now muffled, perhaps even expectant. It is clearly a place weary of war, and wanting to ready forward but not at the cost of forgetting the recent turbulence of its history; it remains to be seen if the opportunity shall arise. Until then, I for one will always enjoy visiting such a magnificent and welcoming place and if that is all I can do, it will be my token voice of support.