June 2005 · Middle East Trip
David & Noel Coory's Journey to Lebanon
A travel diary documenting the first leg of an epic Middle East
adventure —Singapore to Lebanon.
First Look
Overall Impressions of Lebanon
- Warm, friendly people.
- Many men who look like me.
- Caring parents and quiet, well behaved children.
- All families seem intact.
- Absence of arthritic people and walking sticks.
- Christian Lebanese mostly fine looking people.
- Most Lebanese seem to have quick, alert minds.
- High proportion of men smoke.
- Pervading smell of stale cigarette smoke.
- Older male smokers look haggard and unhealthy.
- Exceptional clear skin of young people.
- Large attractive eyes of women.
- No threat of street violence or robbery.
- No drunkenness or swearing seen or heard.
- No arguments or angry talk.
- No yobbo youths.
- Beirut an unusual mix of elegant and rundown buildings.
- Cars and taxis mostly battered and rusty old Mercedes.
- A country being rapidly rebuilt.
- Many street shrines to Virgin Mary.
- Constantly cruising taxis pulling up alongside you when walking in the streets.
- Non-stop tooting of car horns night and day.
- Reckless, pushy drivers.
EARLY MORNING WALK TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
A Complete Contrast
Noel and I both awake about 5 am to roosters crowing, which is becoming the norm on this trip.I write in my journal and then get dressed and study two pages of the scriptures, which I do every morning, as well as praying. I find this keeps me grounded in truth and helps prevent me from becoming too worldly
I then walk the 1 km down the main Hamra street to the Catholic church to see what time the masses are.
The main street looks totally different this morning from the bustle of last night. It is almost deserted, just a few old cruising taxis (still tooting) and some magazine sellers setting up their stands. All the shops and restaurants are closed and shuttered with steel cages. A complete contrast from last night.
One battered yellow Mercedes taxi has parked right across a side street corner, almost on the footpath blocking my way. The enterprising driver is standing outside smoking a cigarette. I have to walk around his car. “Taxi sir?”I gesture ‘no’ with my hand.
I reach the church and find the wrought iron gates padlocked. But there’s a side gate open, so I walk inside the grounds. A very old lady of the peasant type, dressed in black, is lighting candles in an outdoor Virgin Mary grotto. I speak to her but she doesn’t even look up. She must be deaf.
So I enter the church by a side door and find myself in some side rooms. I make my way into the main church and see a refined looking woman setting up some choir music. I ask her what time the Masses are? She replies in an equally refined French accent, “Arabic at 8-30, French at 9-30 and English at 12 pm.”
I thank her and leave. As I’m walking back out the side gate onto the main road footpath, I see a small, middle-aged man peering through the padlocked main gates and blessing himself with the sign of the cross.
I ask him if he wants to know what time the Masses are? He doesn’t understand me, and thinks I want to know myself. So he holds up nine fingers, with his little finger bent. I don’t catch on immediately, but then I realise he means 9-30.
“The main street looks totally different this morning from the bustle of last night.”
A SPIRITUAL FRENCH MASS
Very Spiritual Singing
I walk back to the hotel. It’s about 7 am and Noel has slept about another two hours. We both feel good and alert. No jet lag. Noel agrees to come to Mass with me. We then plan to walk across the city to the renown Beirut Museum.
We have breakfast, same as yesterday. Lovely thick yoghurt. You can stand a spoon up in it. But hard to shake it off the spoon.
The inevitable smokers in the dining room spoil it a bit. About a third of Lebanese men smoke. There are Moslem families staying in the hotel, with their covered-hair wives and immaculately behaved children. The families all look wholesome and healthy.
We pack Noel’s day shoulder bag and set off for the 8.30 am Mass at the church. I am curious to make a comparison with the New Zealand Catholic Mass. We arrive a little late. The main gate is no longer padlocked and is partly open, but the big front doors to the church are locked. We have to again use the small side gate. We pass through the side rooms, and then enter the church through a small side door, down near the altar rail.
The church is about 20% full – about 50 people. Some of the women look like Aunty Elma. Many are very short. The priest is giving his sermon. He is old, white haired and almost bald, short and very stocky.
Noel soon picks up that the priest is speaking French, so it is not an Arabic service as the French lady had told me.
As the mass progresses, I become most impressed with the singing. Instead of the congregation chanting replies to the priest as in New Zealand, both the priest and the people sing the words back and forth. This is done in a haunting, moving cadence. Very spiritual. Gives me goose bumps.
Then hymns too are unlike any I had heard before. The lilting melodies are tuneful, and yet highly spiritual. They move me close to tears. Truly beautiful singing, and led by a small choir. During mass I sneak a photo with my little camera to show you what it looks like, but I feel a bit guilty.
Communion is still the old traditional round, white wafer. No wine is offered to the people. There seems to be no agreement among the congregation as to whether to kneel, stand or sit. At any given time a third of the people could be kneeling, a third standing and a third sitting. Noel and I are totally confused.
(We were to later find that the whole Middle East is like this. The people do not like to conform and be regulated. Helen Clarke and her politically correct Labour party would be tossed out in a week here.)
The mass ends abruptly, but very few people leave immediately. As Noel and I walk out the door a fresh complexioned young nun, dressed in a traditional white habit, smiles at us and says, “Merci.”
“Both the priest and the people sing the words back and forth. This is done in a haunting, moving cadence.”
CHURCH BELLS VERY MOVING
A Secure Period in My Boyhood
As Noel and I walk up the hill next to the church, the church bells begin to ring. This is totally unlike normal church bell ringing. These are sounding a tune. Again I find this quite moving, just like the hymns inside the church. In fact I feel quite affected by it. It seems to bring back to me vividly, a very secure period in my boyhood during the 1950’s, when families were large and stable, mostly content, and divorce was rare, and church bells could be heard every Sunday.
I take a short recording of the bells on my camera, but it is far too short to do it justice. I am afraid to use up too much of my digital camera card.
“It seems to bring back to me vividly, a very secure period in my boyhood during the 1950’s.”
A FASCINATING WALK TO THE NATIONAL MUSEUM
Apartments Everywhere
We now set off diagonally across the city to the National Museum. What a fascinating walk. This city is so different from what we have been used to. We soon come to an unusual modern building with a needle sharp pointed edge, built on a Y intersection.
As we walk we see apartments everywhere. No lawns, just pot plants on the hundreds of verandahs that overlook the urban streets. There are a huge variety of shapes and designs. Some are swish and elegant. Some are run down. Some are just bombed-out hovels. The office buildings follow the same pattern.
Men are everywhere out on the streets, sitting, talking in clusters of two, three or four. Always polite and courteous. No loud mouth yobbos or drunks.
I do a rough count. Men outnumber women on the streets by about 8 to 1. But this is Sunday morning and most women maybe inside preparing the Sunday dinner. However it should be remembered that the city is mostly Moslem and the Moslem’s holy day is Friday.
Nevertheless most of the city shops and offices are closed, so it is a holiday.It is starting to get hot again and we have drunk all our water. So we stop at a Moslem marketplace and buy two more bottles of water. It is cold and delicious.
We also see on sale some huge pita breads, nearly half a metre across. I take a picture. That’s a standard size garden sieve they are sitting on.
“No lawns, just pot plants on the hundreds of verandahs that overlook the urban streets.”
THE BEIRUT NATIONAL MUSEUM
No Cameras Allowed
After about two hours of highly interesting walking we come to the museum. But it has no signs anywhere to say that it is a museum, just soldiers on guard outside.
I was disappointed to see signs, and also to hear Noel be told as he bought the tickets, that no cameras are allowed in the museum. Noel is also asked point blank if he has a camera, so he hands it over. I hide mine in my back pocket.
But then I see that we have to walk through a metal detector, manned by two soldiers before we can get in. I decide to try my luck anyway, but the machine beeps. One of the soldiers looks me in the eye and says, “You have camera?” I sheepishly take it to the desk and hand it over.
It would have been difficult to take pictures inside the open plan museum anyway. There are alert guards watching us continually.
Fortunately just about everything we see in the museum we see elsewhere on our trip, and take pictures of anyway. Although there were some bullet holes in one interior wall of the museum that I would have liked a picture of.
One of the guards tells us in English, in a surprisingly refined and educated voice, that the museum was on the dividing line of the civil war battles in Beirut.
Like most of the Middle East museums we visit, this one is confined to a rather narrow range of local artefacts. In this case Phoenician and Roman stone and marble carvings, jewellery and coins. Some of the workmanship is very good.
“The museum was on the dividing line of the civil war battles in Beirut.”
LUNCH AT THE CAFE ACROSS THE ROAD
A Welcome Rest
After about two hours we have seen it all. We are now feeling a bit leg weary from all our day’s walking, so we go back out into the heat and sunshine and walk across the road to a small cafe for a fruit lunch.
I have a mango, a banana and a stringy orange. (Why we don’t export our delicious New Zealand Navel oranges is a mystery to me. I’ve never tasted an overseas orange that begins to compare.)
We also buy another bottle of water each, having drunk our earlier ones. We sit outside at the shaded tables and relax. The pleasant atmosphere is a little spoilt by the ever present litter of Lebanon all around us.
“We sit outside at the shaded tables and relax.”
You can see the ever present litter.
THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING BEIRUT RIVER
An Open Sewer Canal
I study our road map and then suggest to Noel that we walk to the Beirut river that we see on our map. It looks quite attractive, at least on the map with a green belt either side. He agrees, so off we go. It is quite hot. The temperature would have climbed to the mid 30’s now I would guess.
We walk down a busy new arterial road, past hillsides of ten storey high apartments, all clustered together. Most of them sprout multitudes of TV aerials from the roofs and have their washing hanging out the windows. We have passed several roadside grottos to the Virgin Mary today. These seem to be all over Beirut.
The sun has been blazing down on us all day. Had we been in New Zealand we would have both been badly burned by now. However I am beginning to feel the effects. So I fish out my crumpled Kiwi tramping hat and slap it on. It no doubt looks pretty stupid over here. Hardly anybody wears a hat. You can see from the photo below I look a bit of a drip wearing it. (Probably look a drip without it too.) Noel looks more presentable in his peaked cap.
The road seems to go on forever. I calculate that we should have come to the river or green belt by now. We have walked a good hour, perhaps two, but no sign of it.
Noel is beginning to doubt my navigational abilities. We stop under a new motorway in the shade for a drink and I recheck our map. It should be here, on our right. The sun is in the right place, but all we can see is a new, noisy, concrete, traffic-filled freeway. So we keep walking north towards the sea, with the imaginary river on our right.
We eventually come to an elevated road bridge crossing the freeway on our right. It has a footpath, so we walk up onto the bridge for a higher view of the area.
And suddenly, at last we see the ‘river.’ It is right below us. Although it is more an open sewer canal than a river. Little clumps of dark weed are flowing swiftly in the murky water and the smell is horrendous.
We have been walking alongside the canal all the time, looking for the non-existent green belt. We had assumed the concrete canal wall was the side of a freeway. So much for the wide green belt on the map. It must be an old map. In the photo below, we are looking back the way we have come (the road on the right). The sea coast toward which we are now walking is about a km behind us.
“And suddenly, at last we see the ‘river.’ It is right below us. Although it is more an open sewer canal than a river.”
THE OLD MERCEDES TAXI RIDE
A Real Old Dunga Taxi
We walk on until we come to the coastal highway, then we turn left and follow the coast back to the Hamra area. We now have the late afternoon sun full in our face and I am a bit concerned about sunburn. Noel is keen to try out a real old dunga taxi, so we keep an eye out for one, but there aren’t that many way out here.
We pass some interesting narrow streets, and see our first lawn. It is in the front yard of a Audi car dealership. We have only seen about four car dealers so far, and none of them have any sticker prices on the car windows. The Levant’s love to haggle. The people that live in Lebanon, Syria and Israel are called Levant’s.
We also come across a heap of mysterious small green fruit. We cannot figure out what they might be. We think they could be some kind of miniature mangos. (I find out later from a New Zealand Travel agent that they are green, unshelled almonds.) Finally, when we get into the city centre, we take a photo of the beautiful mosque located there.
Now that we are back in the downtown centre, taxis are everywhere, so we again look for an old dunga. Noel finally waves down an old red 1960’s Mercedes, like the one Dad used to own. Noel prepares to bargain and opens the door and says to the elderly driver, “500 pounds (NZ.70c) take us Hamra?” The old man shakes his head.
We think he is going to hold out for more money, but instead he says,”400 pounds”. We are astounded. However we climb in. I sit in the front. The dashboard is split and eaten away by the sun, so are the seats. The broken springs under the blanket on the front seat make it feel like sitting on a toilet.
The elderly taxi driver does not understand English, nor the name of our hotel. But he has a young boy in the back seat who helps somewhat. So off we go. The motor is not running on all cylinders and there is a bad driveshaft vibration. We can also smell exhaust fumes. The old Mercedes rides quite softly however, with its worn out shock absorbers.
The driver soon stops the car and the boy gets out. Again we start off, but then he stops again outside a group of young men on the footpath and beckons over one in his 20’s whom he recognises. The driver grabs Noel’s hotel card from his hand and thrusts it at the young man to read.
An animated conversation in Arabic, with much gesticulating follows. The driver still looks puzzled. Driving such an old wreck, he probably doesn’t take many passengers to hotels.
We once more chug off up the road and soon we arrive in the main street of Hamra ,near the church we attended this morning. But then the driver makes a wrong turn up a one-way street. He appears a bit flustered. So Noel pays him the fare and tells him we will get out here and walk the rest of the way.
“The dashboard is split and eaten away by the sun, so are the seats.”
A NIGHTMARE LIFT EXPERIENCE FOR NOEL
Stuck in Total Darkness
It is about half a km to our hotel and we are grateful to see it. We enter one of the two tiny wood-panelled lifts and press the button. The door closes, the lift begins to move upward, then suddenly stops and the lights and everything inside go totally black. We cannot see a thing.
This is one of Noel’s worst nightmares and he is quite shaken. I grope for the buttons and press every one, but nothing happens. Fortunately it must have just been a power cut, because the power comes back on after about a minute and the lift descends the few feet to the ground floor and the door opens.
Noel is reluctant to use the lift again. But when we go to walk up the stairs, we find the first floor blocked off temporarily. So we have to go back down and use a lift. Noel understandably chooses the other one.
Our troubles are not yet over. We find we cannot unlock the door to our hotel room. The door card (a type of electronic key) has stopped working. So back we go down in the lift again to the reception desk. I think Noel held his breath all the way down. I offered a silent prayer that all would be well.
The card just needed to be re-swiped by the lobby desk attendant. The card just needed to be re-swiped by the lobby desk attendant. Later a porter brings us each up another bottle of water, our third for the day. This is an expensive way of buying water, as he has to be tipped also, but we are so thirsty.
“This is one of Noel’s worst nightmares and he is quite shaken.”
SUNDAY NIGHT ON THE CORNICHE
A Real Festival Atmosphere
After we have restored our energy, we go out at dusk to get something to eat. We buy some more spinach-filled pasties and an ice cream each.
It is dark and we decide to walk along the popular, crowded Corniche. This is a cliff side road overlooking the sea. This part of Beirut is similar to the Mount Maunganui beach waterfront drive. It is regarded as a cool place to be. It attracts young people, families, and exuberant hoon drivers.
On our way, as Noel is taking a night picture of a poster of Saad, the Prime Minister of Lebanon, he notices in the LCD screen of his camera, a continuous, jagged lightning flash, running down from the sky to the road. My camera shows the same bizarre thing. But we can’t see it with the naked eye. Nor does it show up in the picture when taken. I have never seen it before or since.
We also see a local cockroach on a wall and take a photo. These are not as ugly as the Gisborne cockroaches found in Tauranga.
When we get to the Corniche we experience a real festival atmosphere. There is also a children’s Beirut Luna Park complex with Ferris Wheel, etc, located here. Extremely noisy inside with children chatting and shouting and machinery whirring. The traffic on the street is fast and continuous and again it’s almost impossible to cross the road.
The teeming crowds are mostly groups of young people and whole families. No hats. Mine and Raymond’s balding pattern is common among the older Dads with their children. Everybody seems happy and well behaved. No one seems to have been drinking.
We walk higher up the hill road and look out over the ocean. Some of the offshore rocks are lit up with lights. As we wait to cross the road to walk home to the hotel a long procession of decorated wedding cars drives by. Lots of exuberant horn honking. It all seems entirely wholesome. I am again reminded of my boyhood days in the 1950’s. Just the ever present litter on the streets spoils it somewhat.
We walk in a giant loop back to our hotel. We see our first dog and a few cats under the parked cars. This is our last night in Beirut. Tomorrow we should be staying up in the mountains, at our grandfather’s home town of Bcharre.
“When we get to the Corniche we experience a real festival atmosphere.”
David & Noel Coory · Middle East Trip
June 2005 · Tauranga, New Zealand to Singapore and beyond
Redesigned with care · Original travel diary preserved