Back from Lebanon

Baalbek

I promise I will upload the pictures... Since I am the worst organized person in the world, I have misplaced my uploading cable, so till I find it, let me tell you about the end of this trip in another reality.


On Saturday night we went out to MYU in Gemmayzeh, which is the heart of Beirutian night life. Like Central, Myu has an inside design with a bulged fake ceiling, like a shelter against bombs. Art, architecture, fashion are an instant conveyor of history: in Beirut you see signs that the country is on edge of war everywhere.


On Sunday we took a car to the back-country: did I tell you how the coast line was beautiful or did I forget to mention it because of everything that needed noticing in the capital? When you look at it from the Corniche which reminds of the Promenade des Anglais over the Mediterranean, you can see blue grey mountains luxurious with rich forests, capped with snow, falling into the turquoise see. When you drive inside and pass these mountains, you enter a flat plateau hemmed in dry peaks, brown and ocher under the blue sky.


The political geography is instantaneous: Beirut mostly displays the blue flag stamped with a white star of the Party of the future (the liberal party), but the road in the back-country is scattered with green and yellow posters of the Hezbollah. There are not many towns and they are all quite small and derelict, but whenever you pass through one of them, among the shabby buildings standing all grey under the sun, there will often been one house, scandalously rich and new. It was built by an expatriate who went to work in Africa, made a fortune and came back to their hometown. The house is a sign of financial success and a proof of patry attachment.


Our first stop was supposed to be in Kasar, where they make one of the best red wines all coloured with the Middle-East sun. It was 10am so the fact that the vinery was closed andwe could not do any tasting almost came as a relief, considering we had ended saturday on a typical drink (well one or more): a vodka shot with tobasco topped with a green olive. Ooooh my stomach the next day!


We then moved on to Baalbek. How to describe it? I was inhabited 3000 years ago. It saw the Phoenician era, the Egyptian era, the greek era during which it was well-named 'Heliopolis' (city of the sun), the Roman era, and the North Arbic domination... and many others since. The archeological center is a patchowrk of all, it is a golden site, shining under the sun and breathtakingly beautiful in the midst of the flat plain immensity. We had a humourous guide who did not teach us a lot in terms of what we were visting, but kept making jokes for our benefit and the disarray of the two Australian women who found themselves with us. When he said he had six wives and Lana and I starting laughing out loud, they frowned, wondering, until he reassured them by offering the truth of his only woman and two kids called Andrew and Nathalie.


After the visit we went to to Anjar, which is one of the best preserved Roman cities I have ever seen: some of the houses' first floors are still standing, and the stones still display the gay colours they were painted in. During the Syrian occupation, it used to be the base of the Syrian intelligence services, because it is very close to the border.


So close actually... so close that if I had had my passport on me, I would probably have crossed over. Good thing I did not get a choice: Travelling is so dangerous: like alcohol, like ciggarettes, it makes you want more when you start on it. Such a fix when I begin I would never go back.


After Anjar we took the road back to Beirut. For a little while it was rally quiet, and when we arrived to the mountains we had to cross, suddenly everything turned crazy: after the commemoration of Hariri's death which caused a few confrontations in the capital, there were reactions in different places of the country. Chiite and police cars got attacked: we went through a place were something like an intifada was going on, cars glasses crushed with stones, trucks laying on the side, soldiers checking every vehicle. In our car, it felt oddly safe and troubled at the same time, even when a 4x4 ran into us at low speed in the confusion.


We finished with a cozy dinner on Hamra street at the bar of Le Rouge, a French-inspired restaurant where people from right and left wings hang out amix, which is rare in Beirut.


Then I took the plane back, head full of a billion of things I still cannot quite fathom.


Then bought 5 cartouches of Marlboro lights, like the bulimic-smoker I am, but come on, 13 dollars a cartouche instead of £60 pounds?! In Istanbul and Lebanon, the rule says you can buy 10. On my way back though, I got arrested twice and questioned on where I came from,, what I was doing in Lebanon, and I started wondering why: did I really look like a terrorist? Was it the plaids, the skinny black jeans and the red military jacket -did they have an apprahension about Peruvian-guard style?


At any point, when I arrived in London, I got pulled over in the 'nothing to declare' customs file by an officer who asked me 'are you coming from Beirut'? Since I had been transiting through Istanbul, I thought he was being rather insightful but played the game fairly. He asked me a few questions, and made me open my suitcase which was full to the brim of soap, loukoums and other Lebanese delicacies my flatmates would have killed me for not bringing back, and yes a few cartouchesof ciggarettes... Apparently you are not allowed to bring more than one back in Europe.


Thank God for the Dior Nude anti-ring foundation upon arrival after two hours of sleep, because there is no way this man would have otherwise told me he would give me the benefit of the doubt... and let me walk by with all the ciggarettes I had purchased so illegally.


Too many mezzes over there, I now need to go on a crash diet.


Champagnista V