Innocence and War

by Ian Strathcarron

  We know these to be the tallest columns ever made. Mark Twain noticed “the great fragments of pillars among which you are standing, and find that they are eight feet through; and with them lie beautiful capitals apparently as large as a small cottage; and also single slabs of stone, superbly sculptured, that are four or five feet thick. You wonder where these monstrous things came from, and it takes some little time to satisfy yourself that the airy and graceful fabric that towers above your head is made up of their mates. It seems too preposterous.”

  The temples were ordered to cease pagan worship by the Christian emperor Constantine the Great in 324 AD, but the worshipers of Jupiter, Bacchus, Venus and Mercury refused to obey and it wasn’t until two hundred years later when Justinian ordered some columns to be moved to Constantinople to help build the Hagia Sofia that pagan worship died. Since then the site has been abused into different forms from Byzantine basilica to Muslim citadel, suffered half a dozen earthquakes - and had its foundations shaken by Israeli bombs in 2006. Today it hosts a yearly mid-summer jazz festival, and in the long autumn of its days still enjoys the look of awe and wonder on the faces of all those who visit it.

  ***

  The comfort of the snug berth on Vasco da Gama is now a hard day’s bus ride behind me, and mindful that Mark Twain was living it up in his caravanserai camp just across the road, I think a night at the Palmyra Hotel in Baalbek might be just the ticket. No ordinary hotel, the Palmyra, more a living testament to the glory days of travel before anything as common as tourism, when to travel11 hopefully was better than to arrive. From the bright sunlight of the world outside one enters through worn out spring doors into virtual darkness. The eyes take a moment to recalibrate and then you notice how cool it is, then how quiet - clearly no air conditioning. From a passage off to the right a pale stooping figures appears, shuffles up slowly and bids you “welcome”. This you learn later is Simon (as in See-mon), as much part of the hotel as the pictures of famous guests down the ages. With an impish smile he gestures you to sit and wanders off to find the drink you ordered. You wonder if there is any ice, then become still enough for it not to matter. Ten minutes later Simon shuffles back in, balancing a tray on an upturned hand like he has done a thousand times before. On the tray is an open bottle of Coke, a glass with a slice of lemon and a folded linen napkin. In his other hand is a bucket of ice.

  The rooms are old and shabby, but clean and comfortable. It’s the kind of place that Mark Twain would loathe, resting on its laurels, unthinkingly Old World, not too bothered about the New. I feel rather at home here. I lie on the bed, the springs yield and fail to bounce back. The hot shower is a warm trickle; the loo needs several good pushes to flush but then gargles a reluctant gurgle before succumbing to gravity. The reading lamp is an old 40 watter, and there’s no TV. Out of curiosity I run my finger across the top of the doorframe, seeing about the dust. There isn’t any, which I find curiously disappointing.

  The next morning Simon shows me the gallery of famous guests. His eyes smile at the memories. Pride of place goes to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had the hotel rebuilt in the late nineteenth century; there’s also a large poster of him in the hall. Simon wasn’t born then, but it must have been close. In the First World War this was the German HQ, but only Kaiser Bill is represented.

  Then we see a young Charles de Gaulle, trademark cap at a jaunty angle. “Was he well behaved?” I ask.

  “Always in a hurry,” Simon replies, “not so friendly, not like him.”

  He was pointing at Mustafa Kamal, better known as Ataturk. “I was very young, but I served him. He asked about working here. A gentleman.”

  There are several photographs of Jean Cocteau, as well as letters and sketches.

  “It seems like he came here many times?” I ask

  “Mais oui. Many times, for long times too. Everybody loved him. He was very jolly.”

  “And her?” I point to Agatha Christie.

  “Ah yes, she stayed for a month, I think about one month.”

  “Writing?”

  “I can’t say, but yes, I suppose. We had many British here in the Second World War, the officers stayed here as their base. But no photographs.”

  “He looks familiar,” I say.

  Simon laughs, “Yes, James Bond.” We are looking at Ian Fleming.

  But after Fleming the gallery only serves to chart the hotel’s decline. There are Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, although Simon “did not understand what they said” and after that the B-lists and C-lists and on downward to... Demis Roussos. Then there is a power cut and the gallery and the whole hotel are dark once more.

  Later at the bar I ask Simon: “How are things now, for you, for the hotel?”

  “With the Muslims?”

  “Yes”

  “I am old. It is better. There is money now. There is peace. They have respect. I am Catholic, but some of the Christians we have here... these Muslims are better Christians than the Christians.”

  “And the hotel?”

  “It is too old. Maybe we die together.”

  ***

  Before leaving Baalbek Mark Twain wanted to see the quarry from which the enormous stones came; I was equally intrigued. He wrote that he “cannot conceive how those immense blocks of stone were ever hauled from the quarries, or how they were ever raised to the dizzy heights they occupy in the temples. And yet these sculptured blocks are trifles in size compared with the rough-hewn blocks that form the wide veranda or platform which surrounds the Great Temple. One stretch of that platform, two hundred feet long, is composed of blocks of stone as large, and some of them larger, than a street-car.” Quite so, but even more so: “I thought those were large rocks, but they sank into insignificance compared with those which formed another section of the platform. These were three in number, and I thought that each of them was about as long as three street cars placed end to end, though of course they are a third wider and a third higher than a street car. Perhaps two railway freight cars of the largest pattern, placed end to end, might better represent their size.”

  One can walk down to the quarry and now see the self-styled “World’s Largest Stone” - and there’s no reason to doubt that it is. The site has been tidied up and made into a petty tourist attraction. Mark Twain observed: “In a great pit lay the mate of the largest stone in the ruins. It lay there just as the giants of that old forgotten time had left it when they were called hence - just as they had left it, to remain for thousands of years, an eloquent rebuke unto such as are prone to think slightingly of the men who lived before them. This enormous block lies there, squared and ready for the builders’ hands - a solid mass fourteen feet by seventeen, and but a few inches less than seventy feet long!”

  Being an enthusiast of technical explanations Mark Twain would have loved to know how they did it, how they not only pulled these 1,200-ton monster blocks up the hill to the temples site, but just as miraculously how they then maneuvered them so exactly into place. Unfortunately I cannot help him as the museum built under the temples since his visit is so poorly lit and inadequately diagrammed as to be useless. But if one man can push his own weight uphill, and that man was an undernourished slave weighing one hundred pounds, there must have been over two and a half million slaves to move that 1,200 ton rock - er, no that can’t be right. Must have had pulleys and ropes and all sorts too. I can sense him badgering me, but one hundred and fifty years later.

  The first serious fall-out among the Excursionists occurred as the caravan- serai left Baalbek. It was a Friday morning. Damascus was some sixty hot and ragged miles away. The dragomen Abraham and Mohammed told them it would take three days. The New Pilgrims counted on their fingers: Friday, Saturday, Sunday - and declared that would be impossible as it would mean travelling on the Sabbath; they would all have to complete the journey in two days to retain their saintliness.

  Mar
k Twain led the protests: “We were all perfectly willing to keep the Sabbath day, but there are times when to keep the letter of a sacred law whose spirit is righteous, becomes a sin, and this was a case in point. We pleaded for the tired, ill-treated horses, and tried to show that their faithful service deserved kindness in return, and their hard lot compassion. But when did ever self-righteousness know the sentiment of pity? What were a few long hours added to the hardships of some over-taxed brutes when weighed against the peril of those human souls?”

  Mark Twain’s own religiosity had long since turned a corner. Ten years previously, in his Mississippi steamboat days, he had read Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason. In the days before acceptance of Darwin’s General Theory settled the creation question and Israeli and other archaeologists confirmed the Israelites-in-exile-in-Egypt to be the second part of the classical hero myth, skeptics like Mark Twain had to turn to free thinkers like Paine for confirmation of the wisdom of their uncertainties. We have already seen how the free thinker Paine had liberated Mark Twain from the fear and guilt built into his childhood. In an inspiring rebuttal of the certainties of the hell and damnation Presbyterian sermons of Mark Twain’s childhood Paine wrote that: “Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power, that the [Old Testament] story is.”

  But back on the road to Damascus Mark Twain held his peace; he could hardly do otherwise. Mile after mile they trudged through the scrub under the scorching sun to complete their journey in two days. One can imagine Twain composing to himself: “It was not the most promising party to travel with and hope to gain a higher veneration for religion through the example of its devotees12. We said the Saviour who pitied dumb beasts and taught that the ox must be rescued from the mire even on the Sabbath day, would not have counseled a forced march like this. Nothing could move the pilgrims. They must press on. Men might die, horses might die, but they must enter upon holy soil next week, with no Sabbath-breaking stain upon them. Thus they were willing to commit a sin against the spirit of religious law, in order that they might preserve the letter of it.”

  As Twain was to explain in later life the New Pilgrims’ observance of the Sabbath was anyway dependent on which of the three versions of the commandment was mentioned in the Old Testament. In Exodus the fourth commandment instructs all believers and their slaves to refrain from any work on the day. (A chapter later God instructs Moses about how to buy and sell slaves - having bored their ears through with an awl - before offering guidance on how to sell one’s daughters.) In the Deuteronomy myth the Sabbath becomes not a day of rest after six days of creation but as an anniversary of God leading the chosen ones out of Egypt.

  Mark Twain was yet to know the interpretation of the Sabbath in Judges or the matter might have been settled. Here the observance of the Sabbath touches on humanity, not to say productivity, for masters and slaves alike: “Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.” In the meantime he could only reflect, along with Thomas Paine: “These Books are spurious, Moses is not the author of them; and still further they were not written in the time of Moses, that they were a much later attempted history of the life of Moses, and of the times in which he is said to have lived, written by some very ignorant pretenders long after his death.” It might sound harsh on ignorance but for the modernist technocrat Mark Twain: “back then everyone was ignorant, ignorance was their dollars and cents, why nobody knew anything about anything.”

  The next day, the Saturday, provided no rest as the New Pilgrims continued their march; instead, “The next day was an outrage upon men and horses both. It was another thirteen-hour stretch. It was over the barrenest chalk-hills and through the baldest canons that even Syria can show. The heat quivered in the air everywhere. In the canyons we almost smothered in the baking atmosphere. On high ground, the reflection from the chalk-hills was blinding. It was cruel to urge the crippled horses, but it had to be done in order to make Damascus Saturday night. We saw ancient tombs and temples of fanciful architecture carved out of the solid rock high up in the face of precipices above our heads, but we had neither time nor strength to climb up there and examine them.”

  Mark Twain would have loved to have known that Biblical scholars now attribute the Sabbath concept to have originated in Babylon. The Babylonian and Old Testament creation13 myths both have the gods/God resting after creation, although the Babylonian myth does not specify a specific time of rest. The Babylonians created the days of the week from astrology; they attributed special powers to the sun and moon and the five planets. So we have Sat(urn)day, Sunday, Mo(o)nday, etc., and in most Latin languages the days still refer directly to the Babylonian roots. The Babylonians then devised them into moon-cycle months, but found certain days to be consistently unlucky: the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st and 28th. Over time the 19th was dropped and the seven- day bad luck cycle established. The Babylonian idea of a day of rest was not so much to replenish, let alone worship, but based on the knowledge that any work attempted was bound to be in vain - so they might as well rest and be thankful.

  By the time they were nearing Damascus, late on the Saturday afternoon, with their sanctity intact, Twain was still fuming: “They lecture our shortcomings unsparingly, and every night they call us together and read to us chapters from the Testament that are full of gentleness, of charity, and of tender mercy; and then all the next day they stick to their saddles clear up to the summits of these rugged mountains, and clear down again. Apply the Testament’s gentle- ness, and charity, and tender mercy to a toiling, worn and weary horse? - Nonsense - these are for God’s human creatures, not His dumb ones. What the pilgrims choose to do, respect for their almost sacred character demands that I should allow to pass.”

  ***

  At least the caravanserai did not have to deal with any borders or visas. Today the overland traveler in the Holy Land is kept guessing as to which border post is open and which not, which old exit stamp in your passport will cause trouble and which not, and which type of passport needs a visa before arrival and which not. Syria has the most awkward visa system of all as the government cannot quite make up its mind if it wants outsiders there or not - at total variance with the Syrian people, I must immediately add, who could not be more welcoming. We tried to buy visas at the Syrian Embassy in London before leaving, but were told it would take a minimum of six working days - no exceptions. In addition to the wait one needs to complete an enormous form with questions about one’s parents, provide two color photographs, a letter from one’s employer and a referee in Syria. As I had to fly to Scotland for a family affair before leaving for Syria, it was impossible.

  I had heard that one can just buy a visa on arrival, although the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forum was ambivalent. US citizens could only enter with a Washington DC-issued visa, whereas French and Scandinavian EU passport holders could breeze straight through. The Brits seem to be caught in the middle; at the whim of the officer on the day. But over the years I’ve learnt a trick or two about borders, and felt pretty sure we could bluff it on the day. I have found it pays to look quite smart when travelling - I always put on a white shirt, and if not in the tropics wear a tie too. Gillian digs out her diplomatic frock. There’s always a special channel for VIPs, normally a Diplomatic Channel, or Business Channel, or sometimes it is actually called a VIP Channel. Head up, shoulders back, done this a thousand times before, a very good morning to you too, sir, it a pleasure to be back in your beautiful country, and so on - and in you go. They are normally quite pleased to have something to do, and somebody on their side with whom to do it. And so it was on the Syrian border post at Menaa, on the Beirut to Damascus trunk roa
d. And, by the way, you can just buy a visa there and then as simply as buying a train ticket. When I’m back in London I’ll pin a notice on the Syrian Embassy’s visa section door.

  But I must backtrack the story as we now have to backtrack the trail. When the Excursionists left Baalbek they chose the most direct route to Damascus, and if there had been a border they would have crossed it at Sirghaya, a village now just inside Syria, where in fact they camped on the Friday night. I ask Francis about the border; he thinks it has been closed since the last Israeli bombing, four years ago, but he isn’t sure. The road is bad and his Mercedes is old, he jokes, nearly as old as the ruins; if it is closed he’ll take us through the Menaa crossing and then to Damascus. The next day after breakfast we are loading up his old blue bashed-up Merc and heading off to one or both of the borders.

  The road up to Sirghaya is paved but caked with crud. As soon as we leave the valley the Hezbollah area ceases, but then so does everything else. There is no farming, no sign of movement, nothing at all. Mark Twain noted that along this road they journeyed “thirteen hours through terrible hills, barren and unsightly, and wild rocky scenery, and deserts in the roasting sun”, but it doesn’t seem that bad to me sitting in the relative comfort of a bouncy old Merc with hot air blasting in through the open windows, the warble of echoed Arabic music playing on the tinny speaker, and marveling at the enormous dust cloud seen in the splintered door mirror. We are in a road movie, but when we reach Sirghaya we are in a spaghetti western. The hilltop border post on the edge of town is deserted, its door flapping in the breeze, and the town beyond is empty apart from a few children scampering in the shade and a few fully abayaed old women shouting after them. Francis’ taxi causes a stir, and all eyes are now on the yellow-caked old Merc just driven in from the south.