166.
Baalbek, Lebanon:
This is a tiny touristic town built beside the imposing marble ruins of a classical Roman frontier city.
My Australian acquaintance has arranged to sell his splendid new automobile to a farmer here.
We spend the night in the farmer’s house--where we are offered an evening meal of lamb stew and sweet tea -- then enjoy exquisite music from a fine stereo in a dark blue room with scarlet furniture.
Our host explains that he is one of a 7,000-member tribe that tends hundreds of acres of marijuana in this fertile valley. He harvests tons of the stuff with combines like they harvest alfalfa in Nebraska, and then his children and neighbors process the plants into hashish. They don’t smoke it. They only grow it for sale, he says, and the Lebanese police and the army dare not molest his powerful tribe.
Later on some of the male neighbor tribesmen stop by for tea and talk.
They all carry beat-up rifles or Tommy-guns and during the evening they occasionally step outside and fire their weapons into the air just for fun. They seem more than a little insane to me and quite dangerous.
Our farmer, who seems to be the big shot, says if I want to make some easy money he will send me over to Germany (like he did my acquaintance, the Australian), where I can buy a nice new Mercedes for him, drive it back here and then he will buy it from me to turn a nice profit for me-- but it sounds a little too nice a project for a simple earthprober like me so I pass.
You know, if you are not raised in a mafia/family of thieves and murderers in Lebanon, you really don’t stand much of a chance of success by joining one and I was raised in a family of simple Lutherans in Albuquerque, New Mexico--so the exciting life of a drug runner hardly seems appropriate for me!
Besides, I want to write this report and what could I honestly write about if I got off the track here in Baalbek?!
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