Postcards from the Middle East (eBook)

INTRODUCTION

To Picnic or Not to Picnic?

Summer, 1995
Aammiq wetland, the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

It was time to explore. We had arrived in the Bekaa valley a month ago but, without a car, had only got to know the village and a taste of the surrounding countryside. The panorama of fertile plain abruptly interrupted by the towering, dusty heights of the Anti-Lebanon hills, with Mount Hermon brooding to the south, invited us further in.

Now we had a car. And we were off.

This was not our first Arab country. Susanna and I had lived in Kuwait immediately (and I mean immediately) before the first Gulf War. After that year, and a time of putting our lives together in the UK after the war, we had returned to the region – first living the highs and lows, joys and pain of learning Arabic in Jordan. Now we were in the Lebanon. This was not going to be a short adventure, either – we were intending to stay. But all that was on our minds that particular morning was getting the kids in the car, packing a picnic and heading into the scenery that had so tantalized us from our balcony eyrie perched at the top of the town of Qab Elias.

We headed south. Leaving the narrow, congested streets, swerving round the donkey grazing on the rubbish spilling out of the dry riverbed, we left the dust, the noise and the colour of our adopted neighbourhood, and drove into the cool green of the irrigated fields that made up the West Bekaa. Neighbours, fast becoming friends, had told us of a local picnic spot that was safe. Abu Ali had been very insistent on where we should go. He had patiently listened to our plans for exploring, our desire to head into the foothills of the mountains to the east, to find tracks to follow into the woods on the plain, or perhaps even reach the top of the Barouk ridge to the west. He simply said, “No! Gayr amena!” It is not safe!

Mines and unexploded ordnance still littered the countryside. The chessboard fields had played host to local militias and invading armies over the past three decades. The front line stand-off between the Israelis and Syrians in the 1980s was just a few miles to the south of the town. We had provisionally earmarked some of the most likely spots from poring over our local map, but riverbanks or ridges with the promise of panoramic views produced dire warnings of maimings from Abu Ali: “Don’t you love your children? Why would you take them to such a place?” Eventually our probing questions elicited the directions to a local beauty spot that was considered safe – if we felt we had to explore, even though it was far too hot and there really wasn’t much to see, and we must be careful of the snakes… and we were off.

It was clear by the number of cars parked on the verge by the roadside that many of our fellow villagers did not share Abu Ali’s pessimism but were enjoying family and food by the delphiniumblue pools fed from the aquifer deep under the mountain immediately behind us. Whole families had taken up residence under the few remaining trees by the water’s edge. Vast tablecloths were spread with fruit, flatbread, salads, marinating meat, pastries and countless Tupperware containers cradling unknown delicacies. Women enrobed against the sun and prying eyes were flapping and strutting around the growing feasts like the Great White Egrets in the marshland beyond the pools. Men reclined in semicircles of camp chairs, taking it in turns to draw deep lungfuls of smoke from the nargile pipes topped with glowing tobacco.

Running between the culinary islands the children laughed, played and fought, a riot of noise and energy disturbing the practised aim of the young men who were trying to shoot water snakes, as they criss-crossed the pools in search of small fish. Occasional retorts pinpointed the more serious hunters deep in the wetland reed beds, away from the disturbance of their kin, after the larger game of herons, storks or, if they were really lucky, a buzzard or eagle to stuff and mount as a trophy back home.

We stood motionless, appalled, by the car. What were we going to do?

Our own children impatiently tugged on our arms, urging us on to join the party. They wanted to play in the water. It was too hot to stand by the road.

“Let’s go down there!” said four-year-old Sam, pointing to the drama unfolding by the pool.

It was not the image we had longed for during the month we had been stuck in the noisy, busy, crowded town. Here we were, finally in the “countryside” but the town had beaten us to it! Susanna and I had arrived, complete with our British expectations of what a picnic spot should be, and we were sorely disappointed. But we had not come to Lebanon for picnics, we had come to get to know and understand the local people, the Lebanese, the Arabs and from that understanding share our faith. A faith first lived out just on the other side of the mountain overlooking this beautiful but noisy marsh. And so we joined the picnic.

To the pulsating drumbeat of the Derbakeh – the classic Lebanese hand-held drum – we made our way through the shaded feasts laid out on the grass, entreated by family after family: “Mayilu! Mayilu! Join us! Join us!”

Choosing a vacant spot near one of the more insistent families, we settled down to unpack our embarrassingly small picnic. It didn’t matter. We were soon proffered succulent chicken, perfectly cooked on recycled tin barbeques, steaming and wrapped in flatbread. Our plates were piled high with tabbouleh and fattoush salads, kibbe meatballs with fresh goats’ milk yoghurt, stuffed vine leaves and homous, as the al fresco mezze went on and on. The children were soon the centre of attention of a crowd of adoring adults and Susanna was being quizzed, principally on whom we were related to in the valley. Questions were fired from several directions at once:

“You are the foreigners living in Bayt Kassis, the apartment above the Evangelical School, aren’t you?”

“Is it true you have come from London? It is always foggy in London, isn’t it?”

“Who are your family in Lebanon?”

“Do you really not have any family in the country? But how awful!”

“What is your family name? Naylor – but that’s a girl’s name – you can’t be called Naylor!”

At this point a rather shy teenager was pushed to the front, her hijab pulled tightly round her lower face to conceal braces, the mark of teenagers the world over. “This is Nayla!”

Our local identity could never be in our extended family, but in common with all parents in the valley we were known in relation to our children – or to be more precise, with reference to our son; so we became Um and Abu Sami (mother and father of Sam). Our two-year-old daughter, Chloe, didn’t get a look-in.

“Really? No Lebanese family? How dreadful to be on your own…” I drifted off in the direction of the lads who were trying to kill the snakes.

“Do you want a go?” asked the nearest marksman.

“No, thanks. I like snakes and I don’t want to kill a harmless creature that is not doing me any harm,” I replied.

“He sounds like Yusef!” called a tall, immaculately dressed boy, as he threw his Coke bottle into the nearby pool. “He likes snakes; he likes all sorts of creepy animals.”

I decided I needed to meet Yusef and so, after explaining that I was going to be the new science teacher at the large secondary school in the valley (which seemed to explain my weird views on animal life), I was escorted by a gaggle of boys and young men into the wetland proper, on the trail of Yusef. These lads knew the paths that criss-crossed the drier parts of the reed bed and hidden meadows that took us deeper into the marshes, away from the sound of traffic and picnickers, into a still world, muffled by the curtains of reeds, sun-bleached, dry feathery heads craning upwards to the cornflower blue of the sky.

Initially we brought our own noise with us, raucous and shrill as the entourage enjoyed the energy of the pack, sending water rails scurrying into the undergrowth. Purple Herons, breaking cover at the last minute in an explosion of wings, lifted their elongated frames clear of the reeds. But soon the magic of the place took hold and a hush descended on the group. We followed paths made by wild creatures, boar and maybe hyena or swamp cats – away from the road with its apron of grass playing host to the village party – into an oasis of peace, untouched by humankind.

“Stop!” shouted Abdallah, our self-appointed leader, pointing to the lopsided fence with its lonely wire draped around the rough corner of the field, nestled on two sides by the dog-leg of a tiny river.

“Al Gaam! Mines!”

Not so untouched by humankind after all. As if to mark the counterpoint of realities, a sonic boom detonated overhead with a second close on its heels – Israeli jets, breaking the sound barrier on their return home. Sure enough, arcing vapour trails pinpointed the interruption as Lebanon’s neighbour flexed its military muscle, just in case anyone forgot they controlled the sky. A daily event, it did little more than cause a slight pause in conversation, but the wetland erupted as great flocks of ducks and waders exploded from the hidden pools. Soon they were...