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.
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