Paradise Found and Ruined

by Marilyn Raschka

Lebanon’s best-loved songbird, Feyrouz, has always had a soft spot for her country’s villages. Her tonal portraits of grape-laden arbors, sweet maidens gathering around village wells, and orange blossoms scenting the air flow through the lyrics of a dozen of her best songs. In Feyrouz’s villages, life is simple and pure, the land blessed and generous, the people honest and kind. Rousseau turned Lebanese!

And right up to the eve of the 1975 civil war, she was right. Village life in Lebanon was all of the above and more. But the war’s beginning marked the end of village life as the Lebanese knew it. Villages became refuges for families fleeing the bloody confrontation line dividing Beirut. They arrived in terror, carrying only the basic necessities. They were of course taken in by their relatives. But the comfortable certainties of village life before April 1975 were suddenly replaced with questions that no one could answer, and fears that no one could put to rest.

Ironically, there was money to spend on these villages during the war. Money that couldn’t be invested in Beirut quickly was put to work back in the home villages. Friends who owned Khoury’s Men’s Shop in the Hamra area of Beirut opted to build a second store in their home village of Broumanna to offset their losses in the war-torn capital and give them something to do other than worry.

Thousands of other small businessmen did the same, on both sides of the confrontation line. With villages bursting at the seams, all sorts of businesses took off. Fast- food restaurants invaded and competed with local fare to honor the urban-bred taste buds. Ice cream parlors popped up and prospered. In Beirut, where fighting caused electrical outages and rationing, an ice-cream cone had become a real treat.

But these intrusions were nothing compared to the big-time building that burgeoned when developers saw the possibilities in the villages. With the Beirut government a hostage to the war, contractors simply built as they willed. Codes, zoning, permits, and regulations were scorned. Condos and holiday complexes arose phoenix-like where olive groves and fruit orchards had disappeared under the onslaught of bulldozers.

“Chalets” Spring Up

Multi-storied apartment buildings, euphemistically called “chalets,” crowded ski areas such as Faraya and Zaarour. They sprang up on land adjacent to archeological sites as well.

Seaside villages went hog-wild to build sun-fun complexes that stretch end to end, blocking the views of the sea. Jounieh, once a gem-like red-roofed seaside village interspersed with orange groves, all situated on mountainsides sweeping down to the surf, was turned into a mini Beirut.

As other developers built factories and industrial complexes that ungraced the countryside, industrial waste was (and is) being dumped in the valleys and even off cliffs overlooking the sea. Toxic waste dumpers from Europe found buyers in Lebanon, and controversies over how much of this waste was accepted, and where it is buried, are ongoing issues.

The ghosts of the war itself still inflict casualties. Many returning villagers are afraid to work in their olive groves or fruit orchards because of real or imagined land mines. The local press continues to report injuries caused by still lethally active booby-trapped toys from the Israeli invasion of 1982.

Village businesses and even those in Beirut saw the picturesque rural roads as entrepreneureal opportunities and billboarded the countryside. When one advertisement’s time is up along some once picturesque route to Rousseau-ville, it is stripped off its billboard and set free to travel with the wind. Great wooden Marlboro men with solar-generated lighting ride through the whole country, and within a cone’s throw of Lebanon’s treasured and supposedly protected Cedars are 30-foot replicas of Pepsi and Orange Crush bottles.

Individuals took advantage of the situation too. Fantasy homes were born. Locations varied: some people selected the rock formations near Faqra’s Roman ruins. (What a great place for a national park, we used to say as we passed these weather- carved figures.) A palace of a place near the Cedars Ski Resort was built on the escarpment that overlooks the spectacular Qadisha Valley. So precarious was this structure that the owners took at face value one official’s warning and never risked moving in.

Ironically, these villages were the lucky ones. Some villages closer to Beirut also were caught in the war and their inhabitants fled. In 1983, Israel’s withdrawal from the areas south of Beirut launched the war of the mountains, and more villagers were forced to flee. Whole villages were bulldozed by opposing militias to discourage their inhabitants from returning. And today, Israeli aircraft and artillery launch regular attacks on villages allegedly harboring resistance groups. Truly, the images that Feyrouz’s village songs immortalized have become archival.

What happened to the villages is sad. So is what didn’t happen. The absence of maintenance and the government’s inability to provide funds for expanding services has left Lebanon’s 1,422 towns and villages a mess. Essential services such as water, public roads, sewage and rubbish collection are stuck in a time warp of the early 1970s.

A survey by the Ministry of Rural Affairs revealed that in more than half of
the municipalities, main roads desperately need rehabilitation, while in 90 percent of villages and towns the secondary roads are unsatisfactory. New roads are pipe dreams unless they lead into Beirut, where the main emphasis of the country’s reconstruction
is focused.

Almost 40 percent of the villages and towns have inadequate running water. In the early 90s, UNICEF did a survey of Lebanese water sources and concluded that virtually no spring or well within any municipality had unpolluted water.

Pollution is not the only water problem. The village of Hamat, about two-thirds of the way from Beirut to Tripoli, has been buying water from tanker trucks for 20 years. The pipeline that should carry the village’s share was tapped into by a greedy neighboring village. The government still has not set things right.

With villages more populous than they used to be, 47 percent of towns and villages need water reservoirs and 35 percent need water-pumping equipment. (USAID is active in providing funds in this area, along with UNICEF, which has traditionally worked on village water systems).

Sewage is a problem that will take major effort and funding to solve. The report showed that between 50 percent and 75 percent of municipalities lack a proper sewage network. Some 70 percent still use cesspools to dispose of sewage. Outside of Beirut, there is an almost total absence of sewage-processing facilities. Hiking in the Qadisha Valley some years ago, I sighted a waterfall cascading down from a village perched on the edge of the gorge. As I approached, camera in hand to capture the scene, I caught smell of the flow—waste water from the village.

The study showed that in 41 percent of Lebanese towns and villages there is no garbage service. Burning and dumping are the two standard ways of disposing of refuse as well as of old cars, dead animals and factory waste.

To compound matters, villages have lame-duck mayors because the last extension of their public duties ended Dec. 31, 1996. Until elections take place in June, ordinary citizens will not find officials to take care of their identity papers, housing permits, and construction and building certification. For the past 33 years, the mayors had had yearly extensions, but no longer.

In some villages it doesn’t matter. The mayors died long ago. Some 20 towns have no municipal functions at all. One mayor, now 90, stays on because he’s the only member left from his municipal council.

Putting the situation in journalese, one newsman wrote, “There is a critical need for municipal elections to inject fresh blood into the system and revitalize projects which have been lying dormant for decades.”

Feyrouz could say this a lot better, but there’s not much left to work with. Nostalgia is a great ingredient in a song, but it can’t wish away steel-reinforced concrete block buildings or replant those olive groves.