Walking To Jerusalem

Walked to Jerusalem

With a merry pilgrim band who joined us for the last week into Jerusalem, we walked in to the Old City through the Jaffa gate at 7:45pm last night (Tuesday 18th July) completing a 3,650 mile journey over 8.5 months through 10 countries (and wearing out 4 pairs of boots)

We're alive, well (if slightly footsore) and have been well away from any of the current troubles - thanks to all who have sent concerned messages. More to follow on the blog in the next few days...

Many people have pointed out the irony that we ended our Pilgrimage for Peace just as the worst crisis in some years hit the Middle East. If anything, it just points out that now more than ever peace and reconciliation work is desperately needed in this region. On the way in to Jerusalem we were able to visit Mar Elias in Ibillin and Neve Shalom Wahat al Salam (from where we set off for our final walk into Jerusalem) and saw that despite the desperate situation, Jews, Muslims and Christians, and people from all faiths, can live in peace.

If you would like to donate to the charities for which we are raising money, you can do so at:

www.justgiving.com/walkingtojerusalem

Our huge thanks to all of you who have given us help or succour along the way. And our prayers go out to all those in Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories who are suffering so much at the moment.

Some more specific thanks to Catriona Laing, Emma Latham, James Micklethwait who walked in for the last week, to Clare Adam (who almost made it to Jerusalem but had to get back to England for her brother's wedding), to Ibrahim and Helen Hariri and their family who sent us towards the Syrian border filled with all the best of Syrian hospitality, to Elias, his family and all at Mar Elias in Ibrahim, to Howard and the community of Neve Shalom Wahat al Salam and to Tom's Dad who so expertly arranged our arrival celebrations and relieved us of our bags for the final day's walk.

Alive and Well

Just a very quick one. Thanks to lots of you for concerned emails/texts etc. Just to let you know we are alive, well and a long way from Southern Lebanon, Gaza or the West Bank. Our prayers are with those who are suffering so much at this time - the people of those places, the kidnapped soldiers and their families.

We're in Nazareth, heading towards Jerusalem on the final straight. More to follow....

Lebathon

The evening we crossed the border into Lebanon, we were met by James' girlfriend Zeina who is Lebanese and was on holiday visiting her parents in Beirut. She and her father had kindly driven up from the capital to collect us for an (admittedly slightly early) rest day at their home in Beirut. We spent the day very lazily with only a brief excursion to look around down town Beirut which was on the front line during the 1975 - 1990 civil war. The area has since been heavily redeveloped (mainly by the former president of Lebanon, the late Rafik Hariri's construction company) with some of the buildings torn down and replaced with new; others restored and the odd beautiful Ottoman period houses still standing vacant, pock-marked with bullet holes, an incongrous and tangible reminder of the city's recent past standing amongst the smart commercial buildings and chic bars and restaurants of the area.

We had intended to cross Mount Lebanon (travelling east back towards Syria) by walking up the Qadisha Valley. This dramatic, limestone valley is the heartland of Lebanon's Maronite Christian population and the site of a number of ancient monasteries built into the cliffs the line the valley. Its steep, rocky sides are riddled with hidden grottos, chapels and hermit's dwellings, some of them still inhabited though most of the monks now live in the monastries rather than living a solitary life. The route leads over the mountains to the town of Baalbek in the Bekaa valley beyond. Zeina's father, George, advised us against the route as he said it would take us through territory where the Shi'ite militia group Hezbollah still had a strong presence. They are the only one of the war's militia groups not to have been disarmed and are known to be twitchy about foreigners, particularly at the present time of hightened tensions with the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and escalating tensions in Gaza.

We decided on a more southerly route to the town of Zahle, south of Baalbak. But we were still keen to see the Qadisha, so decided that instead of starting from the Lebanese border where we'd left off, we would do a stand alone trek up the valley and restart our journey the same number of miles south of the border (i.e. not cheating!).

We took an early bus to the city of Tripoli, at the bottom of the valley, next day and set off walking. On our way, we stopped to visit a strange folly overlooking the valley called "Le Chateau Liban"
. The building, a bizarre construction that looked like a wedding cake made of dark basalt rock, was the brain-child of a Lebanese dentist who has spent his life building and adding to it. We were shown round by the care-taker, who also took us into a metal shed, swelteringly hot inside, that housed an exhibition of wooden scultures by the same man. The pieces on display were as zany as the basalt wedding cake and their artistic value dubious, at least to our eyes. There was a fantastic view of the Greek Orthodox monastery of Hamatoura from the chateau, perched precariously half way up sheer cliff on the other side. A narrow staircase zig-zagged its way up-and-up to it from the valley floor. Certainly a good place for some peace and quiet. You wouldn't get many visitors living there.

We followed a road up the valley until this ran out and turned into a narrow moutain track, precipitous in places, plotting a slightly maverick route to the Maronite monastery of St. Anthony that involved dropping down into the bottom of an adjacent valley and then climbing up the monks' terracing (where they were growing all kinds of fruit) on the other side. Our "commando navigation" skills - highly honed by now, you understand - prevailed and we made it. There was a museum housing printing press
(made in Edinburgh). It had been used to print the Bible in Arabic and was the first ever to be used in the Middle East. Behind was a grotto where the founding monk of the monastery had lived as a hermit. Inside was peaceful and cool. Candles burned by an altar on top of which were some shackles and chains,
apparently used to restrain the insane who were once left here over night in the belief that St. Anthony would cure them. James wandered off into the main monastery whilst Tom explored the dark recesses of the cave. As James stood around in the main courtyard, a grizzled old monk with a stern experssion came over to him and made a "What on earth are you doing" gesture (in Arabic, a simultaneous hand twist and head shake = we see lots of people doing it as they drive past). James started speaking in French, expalining he was was walking on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with a friend and had stopped to pay a mini-pilgrimage to the Qadisha valley. A blank look and a stream of Arabic. James replies with a shrug and "I'm sorry, I don't speak Arabic". More Arabic, then "Parlete Italiano?". This James could handle - "Poco". Apparently, James had passed some kind of test as the monk's face relaxed into a smile and a stream of perfect French - "You foreigners - the English, but the French are even worse = you never learn any languages. Where did you learn to speak French?", "At school", "Well why don't you learn arabic?". Hard to argue the logic of that one, certainly not without upsetting his national pride, but he didn't really give us a chance to answer anyway - "Everyone should speak at least 4 languages. I don't, but everybody should. We Lebanese are great linguists", and with that he wandered off. We went on to have a look what was behind the lovely facade of the monastery's cave church,
built almost flush to the cliff side.

After we'd seen inside, which was walled and floored with marble remarkably un-cave-like, we went to fill our water bottles at the fountain in the courtyard outside and were approached by a much friendlier-looking monk who asked us if we spoke Spanish (which both of us do, passably). He was from Byblos on the coast and was on retreat at St. Anthony's. He'd been a missionary in Mexico for many years (thus the Spanish). Without being quite aware of how the subject came up, we suddenly found ourselves on the receiving end of a what was obviously a well-polished sermon on "La Ley Naturale" (Natural Law): "The sun rises in the morning and set at night. Man is born and he dies. Can anyone change that? Who can change that?" Theatrical laugh. "No one!... Es la ley (pause) nat-ur-ale!" He went on to apply it to gay marriage (not in favour) and euthanasia (against). To show that he was not a complete reactionary and had a softer side, he introduced some more grey areas - "But there are some problems with Natural law - what about Aids babies? Do they not have a human right to live and be looked after? But who should do this?". A rhetorical question, it turned out, as without pausing he launched into his second moral dilemma with "La ley natural" - "And what about married women who want to work? It is natural law that they should stay at home and look after their families. But a woman may say to her husband "But it is my human right to go out and work" - what is her husband to say to that?" Another rhetorical question. We got the distinct impression that he thought the husband should say "Tough luck, you're staying home to look after the babies - es la ley natural, baby!". Then it was back onto the more certain moral ground of gay marriage. Tom briefly and bravely tried to engage in some debate, but his Spanish wasn't up to it and at any rate Pere Jacques was in full flow, ploughing on through like a bulldozer. Forty five minutes later, the light fading, we decided we should probably start walking to find a bus back to Tripoli.

Playing at Being Knights

It was satisfying, after two months of walking through Turkey, to finally reach the border and cross into another country. Our sense of anticipation at entering Syria turned to one of slight nervousness as we looked at all of the signs at the border post, written in indecipherable Arabic script, and realised the we were linguistically back to square one. Not that we had exactly mastered Turkish on our way through the country, but we had aquired a useful smattering of the language between us and now we wouldn't even be able to read place names! After multiple checks of our passports by officials, an ununiformed man we suspected was a secret policeman stopped and questioned us, writing down our parents' first names and our occupations in his note book before waving us through with a "Welcome to Syria".

Any fears we might have had about how we might be received in Syria had been completely dispelled by the end of our second day in the country. We were walking along the road towards the coastal town of Lattakia and a man came out of a shop by the roadside proffering 2 bottles of orange juice. We'd been unable to change any money and made indications of our empty pockets, but he waved his hand and shook his head as if we were being silly, pushed a bottle in each of our hands and walked back into his shop. A few hundred metres further on we were beckoned over and given pizza by another shop owner who we sat with for a while. Fed and watered, we were continuing on our way when a beat up Skoda van pulled in next to us and the driver asked us where we were from. He was obviously pleased that we spoke English and told us enthusiastically that he'd lived in New York and Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He introduced himself as Nidal and asked us to come and visit him at his ice-cream parlour when we'd reached Lattakia.

We took him up on his offer that evening, showing the taxi driver a piece of paper with Arabic scribbled on it. We ate some of his fantastically good ice-cream in a cosy, sub-terranean den that Nidal had built as part of his cafe. It was walled with rough stones with a jumble of paraphernalia - amphorae and shells -hanging from the walls. He told us about his family abroad: a brother in Ohio and a brother who was a journalist in London, apparently having left because of the difficulties of being a journalist in Syria He was effervescent recounting anecdotes and talking about his experience of living in the states and talking about his favourite places here in Syria. Before we left in a taxi to go back to the hotel, we'd accepted his invitation for him to take us to see the Crusader Castle of Qalat Saladin (inland from Lattakia) in his car first thing next morning, before continuing on our way.

The unscheduled diversion next morning was well worth it. The castle, most of it built by the Crusaders in the 12th century, was quite something. The approaching road runs through a deep cleft in the mountain separating the castle on the right from the rest of the hill on the left
. Staggeringly, given the length and depth of the gorge and the amount of rock it would have taken to move, this is man made. The builders left a needle of rock standing at one end of the gorge to that would have supported a draw bridge. We largely had the ruins of the castle to ourselves to explore. As well as being an king of ice-cream,
Nidal was a keen photographer and we all set about taking pictures from its tall towers and in the atmospheric vaulted chambers and passengers of the castle, where openings in the ceilings above let in shafts of light and ivy climbed its way in.
There were two huge, echoey cisterns and a view that made you feel dizzy from the windows of the keep into the ravine below.

Afterward, we drove back to Lattakia on the coast, stopping for lunch along the way. We said goodbye and thanked him for his amazing hospitality - he hadn't let us pay for a thing - and set off walking into the heat.

A number of people stopped us as we walked out of town, one actually grabbing hold of Tom's hand, shoving it under his arm, turning round and literally dragging him to the side of the road to sit down for tea. We chatted to one guy who spoke particularly good English for a while. He asked us what we thought of Syria. "Frankly!" he emphasised. We told him that we had been overwhelmed by people's friendliness more or less since the moment we arrived. Walking away, we talked about how Syria's reputation as a semi-pariah state and the whole region's reputation for Islamic fundamentalism and conflict is such a contrast to our own daily experience of it. I don't know how many times a day we hear the jolly exclamation of "Welcome to Syria!" often followed by a kind invitation or offer of assistance. People's first instinct upon seeing a foreigner here is one of welcome and hospitality. It is hard not to think how different a reception a pair of travelling Syrians would likely receive in Britain.

Our first stint of walking in Syria hasn't been entirely without upset, however. We were camping on our forth night in the county (a particularly nice spot, on the sun-warmed concrete porch of an half built house on the beach) and were just falling asleep when a torch beam lit up the inside of the tent and we heard loud voices shouting at us in Arabic from outside. Peering out, we saw two boys who can't have been 18 wearing khaki, one of them carrying an machine gun (fortunately, not pointing it at us). One of them asked us something gruffly in Arabic (people sound angry whatever they're saying in Arabic!) We answered in English, establishing the fact there was going to be a communication problem. After talking into his radio, they asked us to come with them and took us to the local cafe where their ununiformed, machine gun-carrying boss was relaxing along with other men folk from the village. Luckily someone spoke English and was able to translate for us. Our passports were inspected and we were asked when we'd entered Syria and what we were doing. We were walking to Jordan, we replied. "You have no other mission here?" He asked. Annoyed at having been woken up and marched through the dark to be asked pointless questions by bored soldiers and petty officials, we were tempted to answer that actually, fair cop, we were carrying out a coastal survey for Mossad... but thought better of it. Eventually we were allowed to go back to bed, only to be woken up by another visit from them half an hour later. They wanted to move us somewhere else. Thoroughly grumpy by this stage, we dug our heels in asking,
"Why?"
"For your security. It is not safe here."
"Why not?"
"...It is dark."
"We've got torches." Followed by much earnest discussion in Arabic. They eventually agreed and left us to sleep, not before time.

After 5 days walking, we had a day off in Tartus, about 20 miles up the coast from Syria's border with Lebanon. We took the opportunity to go and visit the most famous of the Crusader Castles that are dotted throughout this region - Krak des Chavaliers.
It sits on top of a hill overlooking the "Homs Gap", stategically positioned to control the route from the interior of modern day Syria to the coast. Almost completely intact, the fortress looks as though its occupants might have left the day before instead of 700 years ago. It had everything a castle should have: a moat and port cullises; massive inner and outer defensive walls, battlements with arrow slits and machicolations through which boiling oil could be poured on beseigers; and endless passeges and chambers where which would once have accomodated 4,000 soldiers and 400 knights, complete with stables for their horses and a water reservoir and stores for enough food to hold out for 5 years.
After we'd finished exploring the place and pretending to be knights, we went for lunch in a shabby restaurant nearby. Two men in traditional Arab dress, wearing long white robes and kaffiyeh (Yasser Arafat tea towels) on their heads. One took himself to the corner of the restaurant to pray, bowing and kneeling to touch his forehead to the ground, while the other went to the bar and ordered a large whisky and waited for his friend to join him.

After another day's walk out of Tartus and another happy encounter in which we lunched with a man called Hassan who had fathered no less than 14 childen (he showed us a picture)
, we reached the Lebanese border where we would say goodbye to Syria for the first time. We were fairly glowing from our first encounter with Arab culture and hospitality. The border crossings will come thick and fast and it feels like we are within reach of our final destination now...