Hezbollah to Hedonism in 30 minutes

Trip Start Sep 11, 2009

Trip End Oct 04, 2009

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Where I stayed

Zahle

(Baalbeck hotels)

Flag of Lebanon Baalbeck, Lebanon
Friday, September 25, 2009

At Tony's Tiger Guesthouse we were fortunate to meet up with two typically personable Aussies who shared a cab with us to Baalbeck. The driver chatted with Bilal as he carefully drove from Bcharre over the steep mountain pass and down into the Bekaa Valley. We've learned from experience to pick older men as cab or marshrutka drivers, figuring that they must be decent drivers to have lived so long! The driver sternly warned Bilal not to tell anyone his obviously Sunni name. Baalbeck is Hezbollah's major stronghold and they apparently hate Sunni Muslims even more than Israelis. Ironically, I was safer in Baalbek than Bilal was, as the kidnappings of foreigners that made world headlines a decade ago have largely stopped.

Baalbeck is an ugly city with a nerve fraying air of expectant tension. Bilal was visibly uncomfortable for most of our time there, though the other tourists were relaxed and chatty

Giant Column

. We headed straight for our only reason for being there - the temple.

And what a temple! Baalbeck is the supreme example of the late Romans' taste for extravagent excess. It is the Las Vegas of the Roman world: their largest and most floridly decorated temple complex. The columns are so huge that they would have dwarfed the worshippers conducting their wine soaked orgies below. The buildings are in good condition considering that they were defaced by overly zealous Byzantine Christians, eager to destroy any evidence of pagan bacchanalia.

When Bilal was finally able to pull me away from the temple, we hopped a bus to the nearby Christian town of Zahle. We were eager to get away from austere Hezbollah and to experience the hedonistic pleasures of eating mezze, drinking arak, and smoking nargileh.

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