Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" (7 page)

"No ways but bus across," he said.

"How do I get on it?"

"You can not."

I paid him off and sent him home. I was sick with the
dysentery every foreigner in Lebanon suffers. My head ached from
the wedding party Arak. There was, it appeared, a man with a gun
selling bus tickets. But every time he tried to sell one a crowd of
three hundred would rush him like a rugby scrum. The man fired
his pistol directly over the people's heads. Bullets smacked into
nearby masonry. The crowd quailed and ran backward, trampling
each other. Then they gathered themselves and rushed the ticket
seller again. He grew purple with shouting, reloaded, fired again. The crowd moved away and back like surf. Then with one great
surge they chased him on top of a truck.

Most of these people had been camping at Jezzine, if that's the
word for sleeping in the streets for days with your children and no
food. They were desperate and fully insane. The crowd began
running against itself, into walls, up the sides of buildings.

I was at a loss. I might be at Jezzine still if my arm hadn't been
grabbed by someone who said, "I ken you're new here." It was a
magnificent Scotswoman, tall, thin and ramrod straight. With her
was a gentle-looking Lebanese girl. The woman was Leslie Phillips, head of the nursing school at a medical center near Sidon.
She was on her way to get textbooks in Beirut. The girl was named
Amal, the same as the militia. It means "hope." She was headed to
America for-college.-

Miss Phillips placed us in a protected corner and said, "I'm
going to speak to the man with the gun. I always go straight for the
man with the gun. It's the only way you get anywhere in this
country." She vanished into the melee. The crowd went into a
frenzy again and made right for Amal and me. I suppose I would
have been filled with pity if I'd been in a second-story window. As
it was I was filled with desire to kick people and I gave in to it.

Miss Phillips was gone for two hours. She emerged from the
donnybrook perfectly composed and holding three bus tickets. I
asked her what all the shooting was about. "Oh," she said. "that's
just Lebanese for `please queue up."' An ancient horrible Mexican-looking bus pulled into the crowd smacking people and punting them aside. Amal was carrying a co-ed's full complement of
baggage in two immense suitcases. I handed my kit bag to Miss
Phillips, grabbed these and made for the bus. Or tried to. Three
steps put me at the bottom of a clawing, screeching pile-up, a
pyramid of human frenzy. I heard Miss Phillipss voice behind me.
"Don't be shy," she said, "it's not rude to give a wee shove to the
Lebanese." I took a breath, tightened my grip on the suitcases and
began lashing with Samsonite bludgeons at the crowd of women,
old men and children. If you ask me, it was pretty rude, but it was
that or winter in South Lebanon. I fought my way to the side of the
bus. There was a man on top loading luggage and kicking would-be
roof rack stowaways in the head, knocking them back on top of the crowd. I hoisted one of Amal's fifty-pound suitcases onto my head,
waved a fistful of Lebanese money at the loader, kept hold of Amal
with my other hand and fended off the mob with both feet. This
doesn't sound physiologically possible, but it was an extreme
situation.

I got both suitcases on top at last. Then we had to scrimmage
our way to the bus door in a flying wedge, Miss Phillips leading the
way. Just as we were getting aboard, a worse brawl yet broke loose
in the throng. One of the South Lebanon Army guards leapt into the
middle of it and began beating people in the face with the butt of
his pistol. The crowd exploded. Miss Phillips was heaved inside. I
was squashed against the bus door and lost hold of Amal, who was
sucked into the maw of the Lebanese. Miss Phillips reached out the
bus window and tapped the pistol-whipping soldier on the arm.
"Pardon me, lad," she said, "but those two are with me."

The soldier left off his beating for a moment, pushed me into
the bus and fished Amal out of the crowd. I pulled her inside, and
the soldier went back to hitting people. Everyone in the crowd was
yelling. I asked Amal what they said. "They're all claiming to be
someone's cousin," she sighed.

About two hundred people were packed inside the bus, which
was built to carry fifty. More kept wiggling in through the windows.
It was well over 100 degrees in there. Every now and then a soldier
would get in and climb across the top of people to beat one of the
illegal passengers. There was more shooting outside. I found myself in a full body press with a Shiite girl. She was rather nicely
built but over the top from claustrophobia and shrieking like a
ruptured cow. "What's Arabic for `calm down'?" I yelled.

"As far as I can tell," said Miss Phillips, "there's no such
word."

We did eventually get under way, the bus backing over people
then swaying horribly in blinding dust on the half-lane-wide mountain road. We were only stopped, unloaded, searched, interrogated
and held at gunpoint several times.

Fortunately, the Lebanese are a clean people, even the very
poor ones. It wasn't like being packed into a bus on a sweltering
day with a bunch of French or anything.

Akbar was waiting at Bater. I found out later he'd also come up from the city the day before and waited all afternoon in case I
got thrown out or evacuated or tried to get back to Beirut on foot.

Travel to the North is less arduous. George Moll, the video
editor at ABC-TV's Beirut bureau, and I went on a trip to the
Bsherri Cedars. Traffic on the coast road north of the city is stalled
by checkpoints. Amazing what a few guys standing around with
guns can do to create gridlock. "I G Lebanon" bumper stickers are
popular with the motorists. "Kill them all-Let God sort them out"
T-shirts are popular with the militias.

It's important to remember, when dealing with these militias,
that the gunmen are mostly just kids and they're getting a big kick
out of the whole thing. I suppose this is only natural when young
people lack proper recreational facilities and well-supervised activities to keep them out of mischief. They need sympathy and
understanding. Or a sixteen-inch shell from the battleship New
Jersey.

I wanted to visit the gorge of the Nahr el Kelb, the River of the
Dog, a strategic point on the Lebanese coast just north of Beirut
where for more than three thousand years invading armies have
carved stelae commemorating their passage. A tunnel for the coast
highway now cuts through the gorge wall, and the carvings are
reached via a ramp above the traffic. The cuneiform characters of
Nebuchadnezzar II, the stela of the Pharaoh Ramses, the Assyrian
has reliefs, a Latin inscription from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius,
Greek carvings from the Seleucid empire-they've all been completely effaced by air pollution.

Don't go to the famous Jeita Grottoes at the source of the Dog
River, either. These have been turned into a military training base.
Although what kind of military training goes on among a bunch of
stalactites lit by colored spotlamps, I can't tell you.

A few miles north of Nahr el Kleb is the Casino de Liban on
Juniye Bay. This was pre-war Lebanon's attempt at Monte Carlo and
used to have elaborate floor shows featuring plump blondes who
were out of work in Europe. You can still gamble there, though just
being in this part of the world is a gamble enough for most people.
The blondes are gone.

On up the coast road, twenty-four miles from Beirut, is
Byblos. Since the Christians were run out of the Beirut airport, the
Phalange has taken to landing planes on the highway here. Expect
another traffic jam. Byblos was considered by the ancients to be the
oldest city in the world. In fact, it has been an established metropolis for at least six thousand years. Main Street, however, looks
most like the oldest part of Fort Lauderdale.

By the seaport, however, is an Arab fortification atop a Frankish castle constructed with chunks of Roman temples which had
been built over a Phoenician town that was established on the
foundations of a Neolithic village-quite a pile of historic vandalism.

The war has not touched Byblos except to keep anyone from
coming here. We found one consumptive tour guide playing solitaire in a shack by the entrance to the ruins. He took us through the
deserted remains spieling, with pauses only to cough, a litany of
emperors, catastrophes and dimensions.

The Lebanese are chock-full of knowledge about their past.
Those who do learn history apparently get to repeat it of their own
free will. The whole business filled me with inchoate emotions and
a desire for lunch.

The Byblos Fishing Club at the base of the Crusader seawall
has wonderful food and no other customers. They don't speak
English anymore so I went back to the kitchen and picked out what
I wanted. Seafood got with dynamite fishing is very tender, it
seems. On the wall of the Fishing Club are dusty photos of better
days-Ray Milland, Ann-Margret, David Niven, Jean-Paul Belmondo. "Now this," said George, "is archaeology."

There's a very good hotel in Byblos, the Byblos-Sur-Mer,
whose owner hadn't seen anyone in so long he bought us drinks
when we stopped to use the pay phone.

You can proceed to Tripoli on the coast road, but shouldn't.
The Arab Democratic Party, which supports Islamic unification, is
having a big fight there with the Islamic Unification Party, which is
in favor of Arab democracy. And the Syrians are shooting at both of
them.

We turned east toward the mountains at the Syrian lines near
Batrun. There's a medieval Arab castle here that's worth seeing. It
sits in the middle of a cement plant.

Once into Syrian-controlled territory the checkpoint scrutiny
becomes severe. Ahmed, our driver, began making long explanations to the glowering soldiers. He wouldn't quite confess what he
was saying, but I have an idea it went something like: "I have the
brother of an important American strongman here and the president of England's cousin. They are traveling in secret as journalists
so they may see the justice and resolve of the great Syrian army in
its struggle against Zionist oppressors everywhere. Soon they will
return to their homeland and tell rich men there to drop a bomb on
Tel Aviv."

The Syrian army has dozens of silly hats, mostly berets in
yellow, orange and shocking pink, but also tiny pillbox chapeaux,
peaked officer's caps with half a foot of gold braid up the front and
lumpy Russian helmets three sizes too large. The paratroopers
wear shiny gold jumpsuits, and crack commando units have skintight fatigues in a camouflage pattern of violet, peach, flesh tone
and vermilion on a background of vivid purple. This must give
excellent protective coloration in, say, a room full of Palm Beach
divorcees in Lily Pulitzer dresses.

The rest of the scenery is also spectacular-Californian, but
as though the Sierras had been moved down to Santa Barbara. The
mountains of Lebanon rise ten thousand feet only twenty miles from
the sea. You can ski in the morning and swim in the afternoon.
Actually, of course, it's raining on the beach that time of year, and
the skiing is mediocre at best. But it's the kind of thing that made
for great Lebanese travel-brochure writing in the old days.

We drove to Bsherri on the lip of the dramatic Qadisha Valley,
650 feet deep and only a half-mile wide. This is the heartland of
the Maronites, seventh century A. n. Christian schismatics who
sought refuge among these dangerous hairpin turns lacking guard
rails and speed limits.

Bsherri was the home of Kahlil Gibran and also where Danny
Thomass family comes from. Thus, the two great cultural figures of
modern Lebanon, though in many ways opposites (Danny Thomas
does not write poetry. Kahlil Gibran never did "spit-takes."), are
linked. Or so I was told. I wouldn't spoil that piece of information
with research.

We visited Gibran's house above the town. It's probably the
world's only example of the California bungalow style carved out of living rock. Interesting but damp. The place is decorated with a
hundred or so of Gibran's artworks. He was a dreadful painterthe gentle insouciance of Rodin and the technical abilities of
Blake, all done in muddy earth tones. Gibran's coffin is bricked
into the wall of his bedroom if that says anything about the man.

While we were asking directions in Bsherri, a young man
named Antoine attached himself to us. He got us into the Gibran
house, which was supposedly closed for repairs, then took us home
for a Lebanese sit-around with his mother, aunts, sisters, cousins,
etc. Hospitality is a must in the Middle East whether anyone wants
to have it or not. Pomegranate juice is served, lots of cigarettes are
smoked and tiny cups of coffee are drunk while everyone smiles
and stares because you can't speak Arabic and they can't speak
English, and Lebanese are the only people in the world who
pronounce French worse than Americans.

Antoine's house was extraordinary. Like Gibran's it was
carved into the side of a hill. The main room was windowless,
floored with layers of Persian carpets and hung wall and ceiling
with ornate cloths. There were stuffed falcons, brass things, photographs and religious statuettes all over the place and a dozen
Mafia-Mediterranean-style dining room chairs. Antoine let us
know he thought Kahlil Gibran's house was underdecorated. Antoine's mother told us that she'd lost five sons in the war so far,
though that may have been the usual polite exaggeration of the
Levantine.

Ahmed, though Moslem, was a great hit with Antoine's family.
He brought them up-to-date on Beirut politics and then told Syrian
checkpoint stories. Syrian checkpoint stories are the Polish jokes
of Lebanon.

A Syrian soldier stops a Volkswagen Beetle and demands that
the driver open the trunk. The driver begins to open the luggage
compartment at the front of the car. "No!" says the Syrian, "I said
the trunk."