andave's place

Me at castle ruins by the sea in Lebanon


This is the Harisa, a huge statue of Mary overlooking Beirut:


This is the Mediterranean…


I've been awake since 4:30 A.M., unable to sleep so I thought I'll post some pics from Lebanon and get a head start on my day. I tried to do it before but just as I was about to post them, the internet flicked off and I lost an entire blog entry that took me a loooong time to finish

Here’s some pics from the wedding:
Me and Bullet


My parents


Me



Moving on, this next place was one of the highlights of the trip for me. As I was sick, I was weak as a kitten, but we all went to a friend’s house up in the mountains in Ehmej, free from the humidity and heat of Beirut.

In this picture, at the friend’s house, my parents are smoking (or trying to ) an arghila, a Lebanese traditional “thing.” I dunno what to call it.


After we left their house we drove up to a place even higher in the mountains, a place called Laqlouq. The breezes there, the lovely cool winds lifting the hair away from your face, the tranquil beauty pervading the place had such a calming influence on me. Seriously, I felt like the winds were kissing me into health.


My uncle and new aunt dropped the four of us off in Zahle, my parents’ birthplace.


We visited their old high school, and met with some of my parents’ old friends. The new dean invited us in for Turkish coffee (this is a traditional courtesy in Lebanon – someone comes to visit, you offer them coffee)


Later on we went to the Wadi, a cobblestone avenue filled with restaurants, vendors, and street sellers. My parents used to go here when they were little:


Still at the Wadi, we asked a waiter in traditional Lebanese dress to take a picture with me and Bullet. His hat, incidentally, is called a tarboosh.


The next day we went walking in Zahle. Suddenly we came upon an old gate with my dad’s name chalked into it three times. He told us that he used to come to this place, an old tennis court, in the early eighties when Zahle was being bombed, and he had written his name into it. I can still see similarities between his writing then and his writing now


On the way to Zahle we stopped at two places, a winery called the Caves of Ksara, and old Roman temple ruins in Baalbeck.
Here’s us winetasting at Ksara:


And afterwards, at the giftshop. The guy stooping in the front is my somehow cousin, Rafid, and the people on the left are my uncle and new aunt.


I saved the best for last: Baalbeck!!! Three Roman temple ruins of Jupiter, Venus, and Bacchus, dating over thousands of years old!!!



Temple of Bacchus:


These six columns are still standing after 2000 years and five major earthquakes:




They’re supported by three short lengths of metal pipe in their center (one of the holes is behind me):


2000 years of weathering and this fallen column is still so smooth that it takes a laser to replicate this kind of smoothness today. Archaeologists still don’t know how the Romans managed to do that.


This is the cleansing pool for sacrificial animals:


This monolith is what’s left of the altar:


These temples took over 300 years to build yet still remained unfinished when Rome converted to Christianity. Our gregarious guide, Khalil, showed us these stone tiles in three different stages of completion.
First, sanded and ready for carving:


Second, shaping begun:


Third, carving completed:


Try these on for size:




These are carvings on the underside of the arch I was standing under in the previous pic:


Finally, when Marc Antony conquered Phoenicia he gave the temple of Bacchus to Cleopatra. Although the face was chipped off in the Iconoclast Age, archaeologists know that it is Cleopatra because of the asp and, if I remember right, the waves underneath her (the face in the picture is that of our guide, Khalil). Look at the scrollwork surrounding her. Khalil called it embroidery on stone because not only is it carved into the stone, but the stone is carved out from UNDER it. Stonework embroidery.


Finally, a story about Khalil and then I’m done. When we first got to the ruins we asked the guide how much it would cost to get him. He said 20 bucks. Fine, ok.

Three hours later, when he saw how impressed and how excited we still were about the ruins, he told us that if we were happy with him, we could pay however much we wanted. If we were happy that was all he wanted.

So, we finished the tour and my dad paid him what he had asked for – twenty dollars. Khalil’s reply?

Bess? Fakarit rah atini aktar! “Only? I thought you were going to give me more!”
I always thought that how Arabic guides are portrayed in books was exaggerated. I stand corrected.