Okay, so the title is an overstatement. Actually the closest we came to brushing shoulders with Hezbollah was seeing their t-shirts and murals. But, the Bekaa Valley, where Miriam and I spent our second day in Lebanon, is indeed the headquarters of this notorious group. When we left Talal Hotel in the morning, we asked whether it would be hard to find food during the day in the Bekaa, given its relative conservatism. "What?! THIS IS LEBANON," our buddy at the front desk said to us, as if we were total imbeciles. With that we set off in a minibus packed with a jolly band of plumbers in matching blue suits. The minibus, minus the plumbers, careened up through the mountains, allowing us two hours of scenic views across cedar-covered valleys dotted with little white houses. Mountains, like rain, are something I have not seen since I came to Cairo. There was no in-your-face transition when we entered Hezbollah territory. As a Lebanese friend later explained it, while Hezbollah is essentially responsible for the security of the Bekaa, all the institutions of the regular Lebanese government, including its army, have a clear presence there. Certainly there were more posters of Hezbollah leaders and Islamic slogans posted along the highway, but not more. We did pass a giant green banner that read: "Madinat al-Imam al-Sadr Tarahhab Bikum" - the City of Imam Al-Sadr Welcomes You, and though it seemed like a checkpoint, a fellow passenger merely yelled out that his daughter was sick (she wasn't) and we sailed on through. In the fairly sleepy town of Baalbek, we passed a flashy, domed shrine to the daughter of Hussein (grandson of Muhammad) in the typical Shi'a style before the minibus dropped as near the entrance to the Baalbek historical site. Immediately a man approached us hawking Hezbollah t-shirts along with his Baalbek magnets and figurines. Apparently the yellow t-shirts with green logo and giant gun are a popular souvenir -- but try making it through customs with one of those! Next to the ticket office, there was also a giant Hezbollah mural with an image of Nasrallah, a missile, and Tel Aviv inside a gun sight, with the slogan: "For every building destroyed in Dahieh, we will destroy one in Tel Aviv." (Dahieh is a Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood of Beirut that was carpet bombed during the 2006 war with Israel.)
As for the site of Baalbek itself, the pictures tell most of the story. We spent the middle of the day hiking amongst the ruins as we would at any other ancient Roman site. The Temples of Jupiter and Bacchus are the main attractions -- larger and better preserved than most in Rome. The sacrificial altars still stand tall, and the Bacchus Temple itself is almost completely intact. Part of the complex was converted into a Byzantine church, although pagan cults continued into the 6th century, then into an Arab citadel. Yet only a few traces of these later incarnations remain: the site is a slice of ancient Rome nestled in the forested mountains of eastern Lebanon. One of my favorite parts, though, was the 19th-century graffiti carved - in many cases quite artfully - into the walls of the Bacchus Temple by erudite European, as well as Arab, travelers when the site was popularly rediscovered in the West. As we left, we stopped by a German exhibition on Kaiser Wilhelm II's visit to and initiation of excavations at Baalbek at the turn of the 20th century.
Standing amidst the remains of the Jupiter Temple, with Bacchus Temple behind us
Inside the Bacchus Temple at Baalbek
From Baalbek we caught another minibus to the Ksara Vineyard, the most famous winery in Lebanon (yes, paradoxically in Hezbollah territory) and certainly the place to go for an afternoon snack in the Bekaa. After our tour of the caves and tasting, we hitched a ride on a regular bus that happened to be driving by. The friendly woman seated in front of us told us that she was a refugee from Homs, in Syria. So was the man sitting in front of her. Indeed, we were only 60 miles from Homs, an easy jaunt in easier times. When we found a taxi from Chtoura, a crossroads, to the Umayyad ruins at Anjar, our driver offered to take us by the rural Syrian border crossing nearby. We paused for a moment there to watch vans laden with suitcases filtering in through the checkpoint. There's lots of traffic going both ways, our driver said, and he pointed to a few Syrian taxis alongside us on the road. The Anjar ruins seemed nearly forgotten, tucked away in this forested border town. The crumbling arches lining the ancient main street glistened in the last warm light of the afternoon - and there were baths, and a palace, but it was hard to identify much.
It turned out at the end of the ride that our taxi driver was crazy and tried to charge us $50, throwing our generous payment out the window in disgust. But, to our surprise, when a crowd gathered around us, as one always does in this part of the world, the men all took our side. They actually attempted to determine the cause of the conflict and reason with the man on our behalf. Unfortunately, I cannot imagine this happening in Egypt. Eventually we won and climbed aboard another minibus that took us through a dusk joyride back to Beirut. I made friends with baby Raheem, with the fauxhawk, as a giant moon rose over the mountain crest. A pink and yellow mist billowed beneath us, masking the valley far below as we floated back to the city.
In Beirut, we made friends with the Christian juice man Georges Makhlouf, who spoke with an uncanny New Jersey accent and told us he liked Costa Rica and Pittsburgh way better than any place in the Middle East. "Once I went to Syria... for one day," he told us. "I dunno how ya guys do it."
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