Beauty and Disparity

In a recent phone call Gabe mentioned to me that he didn’t have a sense of what Lebanon and Beirut are really like. Honestly I am still figuring them out. Trying to comprehend my surroundings is a long and complex process. The country’s profoundly troubled and equally confusing political make up does not help. It is a development that I do not want to rush. Each day I gain new insight and knowledge, and slowly the city and country are revealing themselves to me.

A little tired of work, I spent the last few days exploring Lebanon. Walking, taxiing, and Bussing to various parts of the country. On Friday my roommate Sarah and I played hooky and jetted to the Jeita Grotto. Jeita Grotto is a remarkable underground compound of limestone caves. It is just twenty kilometers north of Beirut. It is straight out of the “Planet Earth” DVDs. It consists of two caves. The first or lower cave is an underground lake. Sarah and I glided through this mystic labyrinth on a little put put, which reminded me of the 9.9. The water was blissfully clear, a refreshing change from Lebanon’s oil-polluted Mediterranean. The second and upper cave was one of the most impressive natural spectacles I have seen. It consists of three monstrous Caverns. The size and beauty of which are hard to comprehend and harder to describe. I spent the entire day mesmerized by these incredible underground structures. Every other word out my mouth was “Shit, Sarah these are incredible.” Sarah had to calm me down and keep me from veering off the designated walkways. I desperately wanted to explore. It unleashed my childish desire to be an adventurer. I spent the entire night pretending I was a 19th or 20th century explorer and it was I who rediscovered these marvels of nature. High off the excitement from Jeita Grotto, I continued my exploring ways.

On Saturday four friends and I set out for Baalbek a town near the Syrian border in Lebanon’s Bekka Valley. The eighty-kilometer drive was an experience. This is not surprising as most drives are in this country. We embarked on our journey from Cola station in South Beirut. Our first mistake was to not take a traditional bus from the station. We, instead, took a service bus. A regular bus is much more direct. The service driver wandered around South Beirut, where posters of martyrs replace street signs. He was looking for people to pick up and money to make. Content with his uncomfortably full van he drove on. Fifteen minutes later, he stopped and asked my friends and I to get out of the car. He explained in broken English that taking us all the way to Baalbek “is not good for me.” He fortunately did not completely abandon us. He managed to find a fellow service driver, who was willing to take us to our destination. The road to Baalbek reveals Lebanon’s remarkable climatic and geographic diversity. The unlined highway from Beirut to Baalbek meanders through costal forests, dry deserts and snow capped mountains, finally descending on the Bekka valley.

Today the city is best known for being the headquarters of Hezbollah. The party’s control of the region is apparent. Travelers are greeted by a captured Israeli tank, which sits on a pedestal at the town’s entrance. Posters of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah line the streets. Upon getting out of the car, we were immediately swarmed by old men. They tried to harass us into buying Hezbollah T-shirts. We eventually made our way to the sight that first made Baalbek famous. Lying on the outskirts of town are the remnants of two ancient civilizations. The combination of Phoenician ingenuity and Roman detail and flare for all things grandiose make the ruins of Baalbek some of the most impressive in the world.
I again became an explorer. I used my imaginary knowledge of archeology to determined where and on what I was standing. I created my own Roman city. It was a bustling metropolis, centered around the magnificent Temple of Jupiter. In my mind I resurrected the great “Sun City,” which once existed there. While the ruins at Baalbek represent human kind at its best the squalor of Shatilla represents the opposite.

On Monday a friend and I tried to volunteer at a youth center in Shatilla. Sabra and Shatilla are two neighboring Palestinian refugee camps in South Beirut. They are famous for being the sight of the most atrocious massacre of Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war. Today they are slums. Walking through the small streets was a sobering experience. The day was hot. The sun penetrated the cracked asphalt and open sewers creating a nauseating smell. Large mounds of garbage invaded the already non-existent footpaths. Alex and I walked quietly through the poverty stricken camp. We were silenced by our inability to comprehend. There is no wall that divides Shatilla or Sabra from Beirut. At least none that I saw. And yet the separation is staggering. The relative affluence and livability of South Beirut stops abruptly its well-paved roads swiftly crack. Its tall apartment buildings suddenly cease, crumbling into half built shelters. The disparity between the camps and the city is incredible. My travels in the camp opened my eyes. I had never seen poverty so rampant.
I hope this post reveals a little of what Beirut and Lebanon are like. I hope you see that it is a country of immense beauty and potential. But also that it is a deeply conflicted place scarred by its history and stunted by its present.
Willy