Tireless Tyre sees Sidon Cedars in the Mt Lebanon Chouf
The adventure began with a walking tour of the 150 year-old American University of Beirut.
Darius' Office at AUB
It’s a beautiful campus — an oasis with banyan trees, a beautiful view of the Mediterranean sea, thousands of flowers and a few million cats. (Although AUB spends about $10,000/month on cat food, they try to discourage individual food contributions because they also spend a large amount on spaying and neutering the feline population.
Later, we visited Christiane’s parents and then went to Byblos, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, for dinner. Christiane’s family took excellent care of us during our visit. Byblos, one of my very favorite places was especially exciting because our visit coincided with the Orthodox Easter celebration. It was an ‘early’ dinner by Lebanese standards. (If I looked at my watch, which I hadn’t changed since leaving California, the dinner time was ‘normal’.) Fortunately, Tiger had also failed to reset his watch. He was in good sprits. (And, as you can see from the photo, Mitra was also happy.)
Melika, Tom, Tiger and Mitra had a very short time to see Lebanon — an amazing and interesting country — so we began early on Tuesday with an expedition, courtesy of Christiane’s parents, to the Chouf.
The Chouf is in the Mount Lebanon range in the Druze area of the country. We went to the Beiteddine Palace, a spectacular venue at about 3000 foot elevation in the mountains. Work on the palace began in the late 1700’s. There was a grand lunch followed by the traditional Lebanese narghile water pipes. Tom, Nazy and I all gave it a try.
The largest Cedar Reservation in Lebanon is located in the Chouf as well. Some cedars in the reserve are more than 2000 years old and there is one that’s more than 3000 years old.
“Really?” I asked. “How can they tell how old the trees are without cutting them down and counting the rings?” I thought.
“We count growth rings.” The guide replied.
“Ah ha!” I thought. “And how do you do that without cutting down the tree?” I said.
“We drill a very tiny hole in the tree and insert a fiber optic tube …”
“They repurposed a colonoscopy device” I thought.
“ … and count the rings.”
(Tiger spent the walk dreaming of his time on the ‘double-decker bus’ in London.)
In the Cedar Preserve
We played he❤️rts on the drive back to Beirut and, over a Kabob dinner, we played werewolf. I’d like to say that I won every game. In fact, I will say that I won every game — you, dear reader, weren’t there, so….
Early the next morning, Tom, Melika and Tiger had to head back to California. Mitra, Nazy and I were lucky because we had time to see more of Lebanon. With Christiane, Fadi ( Christiane’s sister’s husband and a native of Sidon) and family, we headed south toward Tyre (Suur) and Sidon. Fadi was an excellent guide.
Our first stop, Tyre, is an ancient city dating from at least Phoenician times. The city was deemed ‘unconquerable’ (until Alexander the Great showed up) because it sat on an island and was surrounded tall protective walls. (Alexander build a causeway from the mainland to the island — which is no longer an island.) We walked through the old souks (shopping area) and saw a Roman-era Hippodrome (seating with capacity for 40,000 people) that had been designed for chariot races. A mere 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Beirut, we could see Israel from the beach.
After a super lunch, we drove to Sidon where we discovered that Fadi knows everyone. We saw the St. Nikolas church, the souks and the Crusader-era fortress. We watched Fadi greet everyone in the city — which was full of smiling, happy and friendly people not at all ‘off-put’ by a bunch of Americans. (In short, it wasn’t the way the region is depicted on US television.)
In Tyre
Back in Beirut, Mitra was getting ready for her flight home. The arrangements were..
“… not so good, Dad.” Mitra moaned. “My flight back to Cyprus to get Stefan goes via Athens.”
“Via Athens? Did you ask Darius to book your flight?”
“No. It was…”
“It’s a 20 minute direct flight from here. If you go via Athens..”
“I’ll have a three hour layover. But there wasn’t any other option.”
“The 3:30AM flight was the only choice?” I asked skeptically.
“Yep. But then I have a 9 hour layover in Cyprus before catching my flight to London — where I have a 10 hour layover before flying on to Los Angeles.”
“Was your travel agent named Lucifer?”
“Maybe I should get a hotel in London.”
“Ya think so?” I asked.
It turned out that the only non-stop flight from Beirut to Cyprus arrived after Mitra’s scheduled departure to London. Showing the drive, determination and grit needed to be an international traveler in a era where the airlines hate their customers, Mitra, joined by Stefan, made it back to Los Angeles with verve and good cheer.
When I checked the news the following morning, I realized that disaster had struck in the United States while we were away and..
“… I feel responsible, Nazy,” I confessed. “The Republicans have made Donald Trump (!) their presumptive nominee.”
Nazy gasped.
“Somebody believes that Donald ‘tells it like it is’ — even though the ‘what’ that he tells changes from day to day, sentence to sentence and often phrase to phrase. He is a master of playing to people’s fears and prejudices. We must make sure we’re not out of the country in November.”
For last week's letter, click hon’t forget: Kiss the bride, don’t order fried, Hope roads are wide">ere
Nazy and Dar with the Nargile