Lebanese Waiting for First Postwar Tourist Sightings

By Marilyn Raschka

"Well, you've been here a full day. How do you feel?" I asked some British friends making a visit to Lebanon after a 14-year absence this spring.

"What people should know is how safe you feel here," they replied. Travelers of the intrepid kind, they had horror stories about Athens, Rome and Madrid.

I wondered how I could work that opinion into the brochures that I was doing for the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism, which is working hard to change the stereotypes and reconquer its prewar tourist market.

Ironically, the visit came just as the Lebanese army was cornering the allegedly guilty parties in the Feb. 27 church bombing in east Beirut that claimed 10 lives. That outrage had followed the daylight assassination of a Jordanian diplomat in west Beirut in January.

My friends' visit also coincided with a Lebanese government blackout imposed on two dozen unlicensed TV and radio stations. This Syrian-backed campaign to reinforce law and order by regulating news broadcasting was so complete that even Peter Jennings and ABC's "World News Tonight—aired daily on a private station—was blacked out.

Just as the ban was announced, I had punched into the computer the caption, "Beirut's multi-lingual media take full advantage of freedom of the press."

To Cut Or Not To Cut?

Off we went to the mountain resort of Laklouk, where my friends long ago had rented a chalet. We passed through Breijone of hundreds of little Maronite villages tucked into the mountains east of Byblos.

I didn't tell my friends that just days before, Lebanese army units had been there proving that burying the hatchet has a literal meaning in Lebanon.

The government soldiers had seized caches of weapons, some in basements, others in underground storage rooms, more concealed under the road pavement. All were in territory under the influence of the Lebanese Forces (LF)—Lebanon's once (and in LF minds, future) strongest Christian militia.

Another security move followed an illegal rally in Baalbek on Jerusalem Day, March 11, in which Hezbollah militiamen openly carried—even flaunted—their weapons. Eleven Hezbollahis were arrested.

"Their detention indicates a new willingness by the government to get tough with the fundamentalists, " a news agency reported. Others suggested that the arrests resulted from pressure to balance the previous crackdown on right-wing Christians. Sectarian sharing, 50-50, is an unwritten rule for wiping up the spills as well as divvying up the spoils in Lebanon.

One day my friends headed off to ski in Faraya, just 45 minutes out of Beirut, while I was stuck in Beirut trying to think of a new way to update Lebanon's boast that it is a country where you can ski in the morning and swim in the afternoon.

When we got together in the evening they told me that they had switched plans and gone to a yacht club where, you guessed it, they had a swim.

Feeling more than vindicated, I simply repeated the old claim in the new brochure.

"Don't forget to include at least one paragraph about the mountain resorts," the person I work with at the Ministry reminded me. So I wrote about Brournmanal Beit Meri, Faraya and the Cedars.

Meanwhile, my friends visited the hilltop suburb of Broummana, northeast of Beirut. "We were horrified," they reported the next day. "It's completely spoiled.

I cringed.

The truth is that the once village, now metropolis, is an overbuilt, concrete jungle at 2,575 feet up a mountainside. The picturesque twisting mountain road leading there no longer affords the once spectacular views. Hundreds of billboards have turned both Broummana and its approaches into a "walled city."

In the spaces between billboards, giant cutout replicas of Pepsi bottles serve to remind travelers of the Pepsi generation that they should be thirsty.

Tours of Modern Ruins

"What you ought to organize are tours of the war-torn areas of Beirut," suggested the friends. In fact, all tour companies in Beirut—and there now are half a dozen—offer a go at downtown Beirut. Company directors say the expedition to the modern ruins is one of the most popular, especially for camera buffs.

So I took my friends downtown, supplying the "on your left" and "on your right" explanations myself. I led them first to an archeological sounding—one of four where archeologists began exploring Beirut's buried past last spring. Several iron age artifacts were among the first finds.

Right next door to the dig is a futuristic structure of the present age where Solidere, the company redoing downtown, has its information booth. Their brochure explains it all.

"Aah, Lebanon's next generation," my friend mused as a little boy came up selling a poster of prewar Beirut. I leaned closer and filled her in. "He's Syrian."

Hundreds, maybe thousands, have come from Syria to eke out a living in Beirut, living in the area's ruins. The fathers sell vegetables, their sons posters.

From the Solidere brochure my friends selected Nejmeh Square—a hub of activity in years past. The brochure pointed out the square's Roman columns, parliament-building and two historic churches. My tour group showed an interest.

I cringed again.

When I was writing about downtown Beirut for the tourism ministry, I wondered how much to say. I knew that tight security around the parliament building would not permit a visit to the square—so why encourage it?

But here was the great test. After all, we were four obvious foreigners—armed only with cameras. We approached a Lebanese army regular standing at the blocked entrance to the area. We smiled a tourist's smile. We spoke only English.

He smiled a soldier's smile. He spoke only Arabic. "No way" in Arabic is just as final as it is in English. We headed off to the nearby Roman baths. They are hard to see because of the garbage and rubble that covers them. Ironically, the baths are located only a soap bar's throw away from the building that houses Solidere.

We all cringed.

A paragraph that needed updating for the ministry brochure was the one about car rental. This, I had written, is for "the intrepid visitor who wants to discover the country on his own.. ."

While my friends were here they had the use of a car, but after one short drive around town they decided they weren't that intrepid.

One memory they had of driving in Beirut's "good old days" was the office where the annual car exam and tax are taken care of. Mostly they remembered the hassle. But a friend who drove us downtown updated the situation.

"I did my papers myself last week. It took me 35 minutes and I paid only the equivalent of $12, with tips."

I began thinking about just where in the government brochure I could slip in that piece of good news.

On their last day in Lebanon, my friends and I went to Byblos, that most ancient of Phoenician towns that gave the Bible its name. As we walked through the ancient port we caught sight of three funny-looking people. Good grief, we all remarked. Could they be real tourists?

As they stepped on the little motor launch to head out for a tour of the bay, we all grabbed our cameras and so did they. As we took pictures of each other, the smiles on their faces reflected ours. I began to hope that, someday, someone would read my brochure.

Marilyn Raschka is a free-lance writer who lives in Beirut, where she is an editor of the Americans for Justice in the Middle East newsletter.