We were based in Cyprus for a fortnight´s holiday and, not being content to sit by the pool every day, we decided to take the short trip to Lebanon that we had seen advertised in the hotel lobby. We had no idea what to expect from this visit. The only images of Lebanon we had were of war torn streets and masked gunmen shooting up buildings, and the occasional kidnapped westerner.
From Cyprus we took a ship and headed east. The journey on the boat was not the most comfortable one we had ever taken. Our cabin was cramped and windowless and located down the end of some obscure corridor at the bottom of the ship. I had taken the top bunk because I thought it would be fun, but with not enough room to do more than prop myself up on my elbow, it gave the impression of the whole weight of the ship pressing down on me. Once we turned the light out it was positively suffocating.
Breakfast was an experience. So far we had not heard one English voice and were very much aware that we were a minority. To make matters worse, we had no table allocation, or more to the point, a group of men had taken over the table we were supposed to be at. English was not a language they seemed to understand and so all negotiation attempts failed. We were left floundering forlornly and wondering what to do.
As we watched plates of cooked sausages and bacon being whipped past our noses, two waiters took pity on us and brought us out some food, which we were allowed to eat standing at their waiter´s station. One of the waiters was Hungarian, the other was Romanian and they were the only English-speaking people we had heard. They went out of their way to entertain us and make our breakfast experience enjoyable by generally acting like clowns.
"You´re American, you live in England, but you like soccer, yes?" one said to my husband.
"Yeah, I like soccer, er, what about Gheorghe Hagi?"
I could feel my husband plucking footballer names out randomly, in the hopes of appearing knowledgeable.
"Ah yes, Hagi," the Romanian said enthusiastically.
The two waiters instantly began an imaginary football game around their station area, only to be told off seconds later by their supervisor.
Their English was broken and not vast but it was the only way they could communicate to each other, as well as to us; somehow we all muddled through with laughter very much playing its part.
It struck me as slightly bizarre that here I was, an English woman with her American husband, on a Cypriot ship, heading for Lebanon, being entertained by a Romanian and a Hungarian. Nothing seemed normal and home suddenly felt very far away. If the ship sank would anyone know we had even been aboard?
When we docked in Beirut, it could have been anywhere in the world. Nothing personified it as Lebanon. Coaches waited on the quay to pick us up. We easily found ours and although it was the English-speaking tour coach, there was hardly anyone on it and, of those, I think we were the only ones whose natural language was English. Our tour guide was a lovely woman who seemed very happy to learn my husband was an American. She told us how Lebanon would like to encourage more western tourists.
Soon we were on the coach and watching the streets of Beirut fly past. One word comes to mind when describing the roads of Beirut: Bedlam. It´s Wacky Races tenfold. Every single car is smashed in various places on its bodywork, Japanese models, Mercedes, BMWs, Jaguars, army vehicle - all smacked with no discrimination. Blocks of buildings lined both sides of the roads. None of them were appealing and all looked like the last place you might want to end up living.
One of the things that amazed me was the mass of overhead cables, criss-crossing in a tangle across the sky, adding to the impression of chaos. This was a mad place and I began to faintly wonder what I was doing here.
The first stop was at a shopping area in Beirut. Good I thought, a chance to pick up something original to remind us of our trip. The coach stopped and we all piled off. The smell of rotting rubbish and stale human odour festering in the sudden onslaught of searing heat struck me right away. I wish I could forget it and would rather have something more pleasant to say about my first impression but it was too over-powering. The coach left and, trying not to take too deep a breath, we followed the directions to the shopping centre. Our group headed up the street to the entrance, then vanished off in different directions.
The shopping centre was a huge disappointment. It looked like a bad 1970s effort. It had no character and half the shop units were empty. The few shops that were there sold nothing that we couldn´t get back in England. What was worse, we had been given two hours to kill there.
Deciding to make the most of it, we left the centre and walked out onto the street. We wanted to see something we had never seen before and experience something different. I wanted to buy something special. We found a bank on the corner and went in with our Cypriot pounds and muddled through an exchange for interesting notes with lots of zeros on them; then we took a walk down the street.
They don´t fix their broken pavements in Beirut, or at least they didn´t in this district - as I found out. Sheets of cardboard were strewn all over the pavements and these covered the imperfections on the surface - imperfections that revealed massive great holes. Accidentally I trod on one and found myself knee deep. If I didn´t stick out like a stupid western tourist already, I did now. Realising cardboard equalled abyss, we were careful to dodge each and every piece of it.
All around us was the chaos we were beginning to recognise. Notices with letters we couldn´t even try to understand were plastered to any spare surface that could be found, giving impressions of too much going on all at the same time. Once again, none of the shops sold anything original. Most of them sold fruit and vegetables that our supermarkets would probably throw out as past its sell-by-date.
We had killed an unsuccessful but nonetheless fascinating half an hour. Not wanting to leave any chance of missing our coach, we hurried back to the shopping centre, where we had seen a small food stand with tables and chairs, to wait out our remaining hour.
Word must have got out that tourists were in town because loitering at the entrance was a small group of children. They surrounded us immediately, holding out their small hands for money and fixing us with big dark pleading eyes. We had been advised not to give anything out otherwise we would be inundated before we knew it. When the holding out of hands didn´t work, the children began to hang off us, clawing persistently, pulling on our clothes and babbling excitedly. Amazingly, we managed to free ourselves and they didn´t follow us into the shopping centre.
Afterwards, we realised that none of the children looked particularly hard done by and seemed healthy enough, but at the time it was hard to resist giving out our entire spending money.
After that, we decided to rid ourselves of some of our money and bought two cans of Coca Cola. The cashier could have ripped us off as we had no idea what we were doing with the strange currency but at this point I didn´t really care. We found a table and sat down to muse why we hadn´t asked for dollars instead. US dollars work just about everywhere.
People in Beirut, mostly the men, think nothing of staring long and hard at you. One man did just that to me. He must have found something fascinating that I had never considered before at seeing a can of Coke being consumed. There is no embarrassment at being caught out in a stare either and no pretence of glancing away in awkwardness. He just sat and stared at me, wondering what obscure part of the world I had originated no doubt. It was a long hour.
Eventually the coach arrived to pick us up and we found ourselves followed by the same children, plus a few more, all over again. I began to feel like a piece of shit with buzzing flies.
The drive that went through downtown Beirut confirmed the images that we had thought about before coming here. Crumbling buildings, half demolished, with the remaining walls shot up by bullet holes, were shown to us. We looked silently out of the windows as we passed by. There were so many of them. It must have been hell. On a positive note, we were shown the down town project of rebuilding. The Lebanese have taken great care to pay attention to detail. All of the buildings were being remade exactly the same as they had been before. They were not redeveloping the city, they were putting it back, brick by brick
Our next stop in Lebanon was the summit of a hill overlooking the city of Jounieh. Jounieh is where the Lebanese come on holiday.
Our coach negotiated alarming zig-zags up to the top where a white statue stands of Our Lady Harissa - Lady of Lebanon, or a representation of the Virgin Mary. She was impressive. A narrow stairway wound itself around the outside of the tower that she was built on. The higher we climbed, the narrower it got until we had to get quite cosy with those coming back down. Once at the top we found ourselves looking out on a view of Jounieh. It was shrouded in thick mist. But there was a big shop at the bottom.
We had to start spending these notes with all the zeros soon. I had to find something fantastic for us to take home with us. We entered the shop and began to browse, slowly; we had been given a curiously long amount of time to spend here as well. There is only so much time you can stretch out looking at plastic figurines of the Virgin Mary, bless her. I´m not against religion at all, but I have an aversion to tacky plastic religious memorabilia and this place was full of it and not just in the shape of Our Lady Harissa; the variety was astonishing. We left the shop with our money intact and went to see if the mist had lifted.
For lunch the coach stopped off at a café that had outside tables and chairs. We were provided each with a box containing sandwiches, cake, an apple and a chocolate bar. The drinks we bought from the café; they were quite happy to let us all sit and eat our own food at their tables. The sandwiches were good but the cake looked dubious. At least we had a short time to sit and reflect on the trip so far. Lebanon seemed to be a real mixed bag of ideas. People seemed to be very poor or very rich. Beirut had looked worn out for the most part whereas Jounieh glowed radiantly with wealth. There did not appear to be much in between.
As we ate, a woman dressed in black from head to toe approached the tables. In her hand she had a plastic bag and at each table she held out her hand for leftover food. She did this with a quiet dignity. She never said a word and she never made eye contact with anyone. If she was unsuccessful at a table she merely moved on silently to the next. Both my husband and I gave her our dubious cakes and our apples. She accepted them and was gone in a second, as if she had never been there. I wasn´t sure how to feel about this experience. To feel sorry for her somehow did not seem fair to her. She didn´t look like someone who wanted another person´s pity but was her life so hard she had to beg for other people’s leftovers? I thought about her a lot for the rest of the day, wondering if she was alone or had a family.
Our next encounter with a local was during the short stroll we took after lunch. A boy of about ten came up to us with a handful of sorry-looking roses. He aimed his attention at my husband and thrust one of the roses at him.
"You buy, you buy," he insisted.
"No," my husband declined politely but firmly. He was getting hardened to the art of beggars by now, I think.
"You buy, you buy," the boy continued as he ran backwards in front of my husband.
"No."
"Yes, you buy," the boy nodded eagerly. He began to make comical kissing noises and pointed at me with the rose while still fixing his gaze on my husband.
You had to admire his selling techniques, and his cheeky little face proved to be too much. My husband sighed and finally pulled out one of those interesting notes we had. The boy took the money, which conveniently was the exact amount, handed the rose over and skipped off happily.
We had spent some more money in Lebanon.
Our last coach stop in the afternoon took us to Byblos. This is a site of ancient ruins that date back 10,000 years. It is rich with an array of archaeological wonders from different time eras. The heat of the day was, by now, taking its toll and I have only admiration for the tour guide, who told us in great detail, while wilting visibly like the rest of us, the history of Byblos. I have to admit that I cannot remember a single thing she said. Only the images of the place remain fixed in my memory.
I do remember seeing a small bazaar that I was itching to get at to buy something but the coach was getting ready to leave. Sadly I tore myself away before I could even get started.
There was nothing else left to do but be taken back to Beirut and board the boat back to Cyprus.
I hope that I haven´t painted too bad a picture of Lebanon. I have no regrets about going there. It is a beautiful country. My only complaint is that we experienced it on a coach tour. Some of the places are not ones I would have personally chosen and I feel as if we only had a glimpse at best. As for my much desired souvenir, I still have the money. I don´t suppose too many people have something like that stashed away. I think it´s a pretty original thing to have and I´ll never spend it now as I doubt that I´ll ever go back there, then again, I never thought I´d go there in the first place.
© Carolyn Eddy 2004