Beaufortitude

A straight road points south like an arrow heading out of Nabatiye where it appears, perched on the top of a hill in the distance like a stony crown. Beaufort Castle, built by the Crusaders in the Middle Ages and occupied by Palestinians and subsequently Israelis in modern history, has an imposing viewpoint over the southern Lebanese landscape.

Until recently, it has only been possible to visit this part of the country with a permit from the Lebanese Army. At least, this was the impression I was under as I visited the army base at Saida, the regional capital, to ask for a permit to cross the military checkpoints in the far south. Having being guided in the right direction several times by friendly, helpful soldiers (a characteristic that seems to be common amongst Lebanese military personnel), I found myself in an office within the army base being asked about my motives for visiting the south by a young man in civilian clothes. Several of his colleagues, also in jeans and leather jackets, sat around on sofas watching television. I was eventually denied the permit without further explanation, but was told that no permission was needed to visit Beaufort Castle anyway. Although I didn’t feel I could rely entirely on this piece of information, I decided to give it a try. I took a bus from Saida to Nabatiye and then negotiated with a taxi driver the trip to and from the castle. Any doubts I had had showed themselves to be without basis as the comfortable, dark green Mercedes taxi approached the winding turns towards the entrance of the fortress.

The castle is mainly in a ruinous state, but some rebuilding work is going on. There were no other tourists but several building workers, digging and throwing rocks into the valley at a leisurely pace in the afternoon sun. The taxi driver, Yousef, offered to show me around. Although he must be well into his 60s, he hopped around the ruins with the agility of someone half that age. “Intibeh – shwe shwe” – “careful, take it easy” he warned as I stumbled around the entrance to one of the castle’s inner rooms. He pointed out the landmarks as we looked out over the stupendous view south and east: the Litani River flowing at the bottom of the chasm below, the town of Marjayoun, the occupied Golan Heights, Syria, and Israel beyond the hills.

The castle itself has several levels and many chambers, and it took a good half an hour to walk around all of it, even though much has now fallen down. It was occupied by the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1976 to 1982, before they were displaced during the Israeli invasion of that year. Bullet holes and shrapnel wounds can be spotted on the castle masonry, a misalignment of military objectives from different eras. The Israel Defence Forces built bunkers next to the castle after occupying the site. Inside these, graffiti in Hebrew as well as Arabic can be discerned. The Israeli army left the castle when it withdrew from South Lebanon in 2000.

Journalist Robert Fisk, who visited the PLO at Beaufort Castle during an Israeli siege, describes in his book Pity the Nation his feelings at the time:

“Armoured men with swords had clanked down the stairwells here; now the steps were used by gunmen in grubby camouflage fatigues”

This feeling of being caught between one time and another persists here. There are no longer many people or much interest in the site and the enormous open space of the valley lends a calm quiet to the atmosphere, making it an easy place to stop and reflect. Still, the weight of history hangs heavily in the air.

From Wikipedia

From Wikipedia

Slight Return

Dark-skinned men with slicked back hair and gold hoop earrings crowd the narrow lanes between the stalls at Souq al-Ahad. It takes a minute or two to make it to the front of the falafel stand, but the crunchy goodness of the fried dough, fresh vegetables and dressing is well worth the effort. Christmas jumpers and 1980s souvenir t-shirts from Disneyland are on offer at the second hand clothes stalls. The market extends further outside the main entrance to the tarpaulins and frames; the part under the grubby Sin el-Fil underpass has more than doubled in size since last year, and there are so many people, it’s only possible to see a few feet ahead. 

In the area selling pets, conditions are as bad as ever. A box of baby chicks dyed in a spectrum of bright colours is placed next to a tiny cage containing a puppy; a few of the chicks in the box are already dead, presumably a result of the toxic colouring. One of them has been dragged into the dog cage, its intestines strewn across the floor. The monkeys that were tied to the top of their cages last year are gone.

I arrived in Lebanon on my connecting flight from Istanbul to the news that Prime Minister Najib Mikati and his government had resigned in the wake of unresolved tensions over an agreement for an election law to be put in place prior to proposed elections in June. Unable to reach any agreement with the majority Hezbollah-led cabinet, Mikati resigned in a move ostensibly designed to initiate new dialogue between the opposing political groups. However, with the government now officially designated an “acting” one, its ability to keep the country stable, at a time when the catastrophic conflict next door in Syria is being felt more markedly here by the day, has been noted by several commentators as a significant cause for concern. The prospects of the election actually taking place are now remote.

There is violence again in Tripoli between opponents and supporters of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. There are kidnappings in the northern Bekaa Valley. Hezbollah is struggling desperately to retain its authority in the wake of increasing evidence of its support for Assad’s government, in violation of Lebanon’s official policy of “dissociation”, which aims to allow the small state to remain neutral to the Syrian conflict in order to preserve its own delicate stability. Meanwhile, refugees of the civil war on the other side of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains continue to stream over the border. Something attested to, perhaps, by the increased capacity and decreased personal space of the Syrian-flavoured Souq al-Ahad.

New bars and restaurants are popping up along Rue d’Armenie, the main road through Mar Mikhael, the middle class Christian district in which I lived during my exchange semester last year. In fashionable Gemmayzeh and Hamra everything and everyone looks familiar enough to give the impression that it’s been eight days, not eight months since I was last here. A cool breeze blows along the dusky waterfront Corniche. I go back to my old apartment and am reunited with a close friend. Fustu the cat doesn’t seem to remember me, but that doesn’t make him any less charismatic.

Beirut. Not everything is the same. Nothing seems to have changed.