169. A Night Fright

169.

After a few restful days in camp I return to Baalbek by bus to see more of the Roman ruins.

In the ruins I bump into a pretty, young French woman who is staying at the guesthouse of the dope farmer. We spend an hour or two chatting. She is going back to Paris this evening--making a delivery, I assume--while I plan to return to my valley campsite.

It is dark when the bus from Baalbek to Beirut reaches the place where the country road turns off from the main highway and I get off the bus. A taxi immediately pulls up with three men inside. I tell the driver where I want to go and he agrees to take me. Along the way he drops his other passengers off and we continue alone. There is no other traffic moving on this country road.

After a long winding drive into the hills, I am beginning to think I have been kidnapped when he suddenly stops and says he will go no further. I think he is afraid of me! I pay and get out of the cab.

It is getting dark and the moon has not yet risen but soon another male pedestrian appears who speaks enough French to inform me that I might be able to get some help or transportation at a church just down the road. In the gathering gloom I walk to the “church” and knock at the huge wooden front door.

A female doorkeeper from a Charles Adams cartoon answers my knock and tells me in French that there is a priest inside who speaks English and who can help me. The place is no church however, but seems to be some sort of hospital or monastery. I follow the creepy woman down a long, white, high ceilinged passageway feeling more and more mistrustful.

The woman opens a door at the end of the hallway and right behind the door stands an officer in green uniform with polished brass and leather-holstered pistol. Wow! Now I am sure I have been kidnapped!

The officer welcomes me in a friendly way and says I may spend the night but I stammer that I really must be getting back to my camp. He says the camping place I seek is still a couple of kilometers up the road and that he and his friends will be glad to take me there in his jeep, but I have been edging closer to the entry door the whole time.

"Non, merci." and I hurry down the long hall, through the door and back out into the night.

...

168. Magic Valley Camp

168.

Magic Valley, Lebanon:

I gather twigs and make a small campfire while the daylight fades. I heat some canned beans and make some coffee. Flickering firelight peoples the rough cliff above me with faces and when some of them seem to scowl, I turn them to smiles.

The night is silent except for the low chuckling of the stream. The moon rises like a white searchlight and I gather some more firewood, then drift peacefully off to sleep on the clean sand.

~~~

Morning: Cowboy coffee (coffee grounds boiled in a can-full of water), bread and honey for breakfast.

It’s great to be alone and in the wild again.

I exercise, hopping from rock to rock in the riverbed.

I am much weaker than I was when I left Hawaii but I am determined to regain my strength and health.

I discover a nearby pool paved with smooth stones; perfect for bathing with a natural stone ledge a few steps away just right for reading and soaking up sunlight.

The natural limestone blocks tumbled into this canyon have the appearance of the building stones of a construction so ancient that they can no longer be identified as worked stones, but to me, it seems that some uncanny energy fills this valley. I explore a little of the more of my surroundings and discover other caves tantalizingly sealed with rock walls.

...

167. Canyon Camp

167.

Was that Japanese monk I met so long ago--who was finishing his earthprobe in Honolulu--ever offered this kind of a deal for a detour?

Probably so.

I suppose this is one of those temptations proposed to the traveler in every fairy tale journey—even though this yarn you are reading, I guarantee, is no fairy tale.

~~~~~~

The next day the Australian drives me to the campsite he told me about.

15 kilometers from Beirut, he turns off the main highway onto a paved country road that winds through the empty hills to the edge of a deep green canyon.

We park among some olive trees near a little roadside store and hike down a path to the canon bottom.

There is a shallow cave with a sandy floor beside a small stream almost hidden by trees. A perfect backpacker's camping place.

The Australian wishes me farewell and a good journey--and I am left alone.

...

166. Baalbek, Lebanon

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?!

...

165. Beirut, Lebanon

165.

Beirut, Lebanon:

This seems to be a modern, fast-paced city.

I check in at the Central YMCA and spend a few days walking the streets and getting my gear organized and in good repair.

I am weary. My diet has been very poor. My money supply is low and I am not half way around the planet. It is too easy to feel depressed. What I need is a vacation from traveling!

At the YMCA I meet an Australian traveler who knows of a valley near Beirut where I can simply camp out. But before he takes me there, I go in his car with him to Baalbek, the “City of the Sun”.

On the highway crossing the mountains inland from the seaside city of Beirut, we pass a few tanks and military trucks with “UN” markings. These are evidently “peace-keepers” withdrawing from the Syrian/Israel border. The local people expect more conflict because, as they say, “When the teacher leaves the room, the naughty boys fight.”

...

164. Cairo Alone

164.

Back into the Cairo Museum without Doc.

I stand flesh eyeball to stone eyeball with the gods of the past wondering if the human drama will just go on like this forever and ever.

And I am having money trouble.

The Egyptian government confiscates all checks and cash that are mailed into the country. I am down to literally my last nickel when the American Express Office in the Cairo Hilton--remembered for it’s fine toilet paper--cashes a personal check for me.

So, after a not much fun week of Cairo alone, I fly to Lebanon.

...

163. Back to Cairo

163.

Back to Cairo: We return by train.

Before she goes back to the states, Doc wants to go souvenir shopping at the old market, the “Khan Al Khalili”, now decorated for the most important religious season of the Moslem year, “Ramadan”.

One of the young merchants we meet in the market invites us to join him in his home in Old Cairo for an after-sunset feast, since he must fast from sunrise to sunset.

When we visit, he serves us grapes, dates and holiday delicacies.

Our last few days together are pleasant but Doc must be returning to her studies in America and I want to continue my earthprobing to the east, so it is “farewell, Doc and bon voyage”!

After Doc’s departure I find that walking alone in Cairo is not so easy.

When I am looking for the Lebanese Embassy on foot, for example, I am stopped before crossing one of the Nile’s bridges by a group of soldiers who think I might be carrying explosives to wreck the bridge in my bag.

As an obvious foreigner and as a single man it seems I am suspected by everyone of being an enemy agent.

I can't blame the bridge guards for their caution. They fought a war just a year ago and they are justifiably paranoid.

There is a lot of pressure under the surface here and everyone expects more fighting to break out--since it always has. They just don’t know when.

Governments rise and fall; wars are fought and forgotten, people and nations come and go. My generation seems to be no different from the numberless generations that have gone before--though there seem to be unique opportunities for change here and now

Fate deals the hand and we play it out as well as we can.

...