The sun woke me up. At my feet lay the valley and the mountain on the other side of it. 
I got up, dressed and admired the view from my "bedroom".
The other guys were up and packing their gear. We ate another can of hummus and another can of luncheon meat. Last night had not been an abberation. The breakfast was as abysmal as the dinner. Horror.
We picked our way up the side of the mountain, pressing upwards at an average angle of 60% or so. CL and Kris were in decent shape and pressed on. After the first ten minutes I looked like I had just stepped out of a shower. Absolutely drenched in sweat, I stumbled and wheezed my way up the mountainside. The views were spectacular.
The path up the mountain let out into someone's back yard. We paused there to get our breath and drink some water. A man sitting by his garage told us we were 7km from Bcharre. That made sense, since we had left Bcharre to come this way. Now we had to walk back.
We got to the church in the centre of Bcharre town at a touch before 13:00. We made it known that we were headed for Baalbek and after a flurry of negotiations, we had a taxi for LL50,000 (25 euros). There are no bus or minibus services to Baalbek from Bcharre. The taxi ride would take us from Bcharre in the centre of the Kadisha Valley back up to the Cedars and then over the top of the snowy mountains there into the Bekaa Valley. Baalbek is venerated as one of the most ancient cities in the world and has one of the best preserved temples in existence.
After passing the Cedars, the taxi climbed up and up into the clouds. The green of the Kadisha Valley gave way to the brown rocks and dust of the mountains. Driving over the pass between the peaks, the road was lined with snow, sometimes as high as six or seven feet on either side.
This road is impassable in winter. The snow that remained ended cleanly at the road where plows had cleared the way for spring traffic. We reached the top of the mountain range that separates the Bekaa and Kadisha Valleys. 
The taxi stopped and we got out to take pictures of the incredible views. The wind was brutal and cold. 
It has been a steamy 26C in the Kadisha Valley earlier but now, a scant forty-five minute drive away, it was closer to 12C, less with the wind. We were parked at the highest peak. The clouds were level with us and in some places lower. To the right of us were a series of snow-capped peaks wreathed in clouds. The road, lined with snow, stretched away into the distance. The mountainsides were sheer, a dusty orange red and fell away to reveal a seemingly endless expanse of desolate desert, broken only by the occasional lonely homestead. Pictures in hand, we piled back into the cab and proceeded to Baalbek, home of the fabled ruins of old and also the heart of Hezbollah's Shia support base.
The taxi dropped us outside the ruins. We were immediately set upon by a lone tout offering Hezbollah t-shirts and flags. The town was deserted apart from the locals going about their business. Hotel and cafe owners lounged dispiritedly on the steps of their establishments. Three days before we arrived in Baalbek, the hotels had been full and the shops and cafes were doing a roaring trade. Touts couldn't price their t-shirts and flags high enough and the stream of tourists was gearing up for the always profitable summer season. Now, we were the only game in town.
We dumped our stuff at the Hotel Shouman, run by the sweet-natured but weirdly apologetic Mohammed Shouman. He showed us his booking chart. Like an eraser had been run down the page, all the names ended three days before. He offered us the best room in the hotel with a great view of the ruins. Then he knocked LL3,000 off the price. Three days before he hadn't even had a room going spare. Now he was virtually begging us to stay at his place as opposed to someone else's.
We set off for the ruins. To Captain Libya's chagrin, they are the only ruins in Lebanon that don't offer student discounts. We paid our money and went in. With the exception of the security guard who had brought his kids to work with him, we were the only people there. It was amazing. Legends surrounding the ruins at Baalbek describe their use as anything from temples to Jupiter and Bacchus to altars of blood sacrifice and wild Roman orgies. The disorganisation of the ruins was refreshing. Stones lie where they fell, strewn around the grounds as if by a giant hand. You can walk, climb and sit where you want and whatever the angle, the view is always rewarding and exotic. The remains of the unfinished temple of Jupiter, columns jutting up like ribs, stand in the centre of the complex. Radiating out from there are courtyards, buildings, staircases, hidden passages that dead end in stone corners and the mind-blowing structure that the plaques refer to as a temple of Bacchus.
Purportedly used for drinking and orgies in ancient times, then used as a dungeon in the Middle Ages, whatever the purpose or provenance it is a spectacular building. Complete in every way except for the roof and internal furniture, sitting in the centre of the temple was like travelling back in time. The absence of tourists, children and school groups made it all the more pleasurable.
Like the ruins and temples of Egypt, Baalbek is marked with graffiti that provides a kind of historical record all its own. Carvings of names and countries as far back as 1861 add a certain well-tramped cheapness to the ruins that make them more lovable. Somehow, the idea that our generation isn't the first to desecrate works of art with self-referential scribbling is very comforting. Another curiosity is why the graffiti only goes back to 1861 if the ruins have been here for so long. Maybe graffiti was invented in 1861. Who knew?
After finishing our exploration of the ruins, we returned to the hotel where Mohammed was waiting with an offer we simply could not refuse.
"Big stone?" Mohammed asked hopefully, jiggling his car keys enticingly.
CL, Kris and I looked at each other. "What?"
"Big stone," Mohammed elaborated, nodding encouragingly. "Biggest in the world."
There was an awkward pause.
"You want to see? We can take my car."
CL and Kris were still unconvinced but I was all over that like a cheap suit. Moments later we were in Mohammed's ancient Mercedes on our way to see the self-proclaimed Biggest Stone in the World. Upon arriving there, two things became very clear. First, this stone was very, very, very big. Secondly, it seemed a little too small to be the biggest in the world, but the look of pride on Mohammed's face forced me into exaggerated appreciations of its size.
"Wow!" I cried. "That's a big fucking stone!"
Mohammed beamed. I motioned at CL and Kris.
"Yeah," they added, looking at each other and then me. "That's really big. I've never seen a stone that big." etc.
Pictures were taken of each of us in various "hilarious" poses - "lifting" the stone, being "crushed" by the stone. Eventually, even Mohammed's enthusiasm was waning and we pressed on.
On the way back in the car, we spotted a beautiful blue mosque, built in the Shia style most popularly exhibited in Iran. I asked Mohammed if we could have a look. He parked, walked through the gate, spoke to the guards and came back to us. We would be allowed access to the mosque. I asked why we needed special permission. He explained that this was a Hezbollah mosque, built with Iranian funding. The mosque grounds also played host to that most fabled of creatures, the white whale that Captain Libya and I had sought throughout our visit to Lebanon - the Hezbollah Gift Shop.
Was it open? You betzler.
The mosque was exquisite inside, hung with crystal chandeliers, the light from the setting sun casting tall beams of lights across the thick carpet. The walls and ceilings were a mosaic of coloured tiles and tiny mirrors, giving the entire room a disco ball effect that was quite something.
The centre of the room was given over to a shrine that glowed with a green light. In the shrine was a coffin. Mohammed introduced a member of Hezbollah named Ali who explained the coffin to us. The coffin, as far as his limited English could convey, was the coffin of a child martyr and the mosque as a whole was dedicated to the children of Fatima. Later, in Damascus, I would see the same filigreed cage filled with green light, the same draped coffin, the same money strewn over the top, in the Ummayad Mosque.
Ali walked us around the mosque, pointing out features and answering our questions either in broken English or through Mohammed as an equally bad interpreter. Around Ali's neck was a huge necklace in the shape of a scimitar, inscribed with the name of the Prophet Ali and a prayer in his name.
These necklaces are apparently very popular. The Hezbollah Gift Shop sells loads of them.
In the corner of the mosque was a pulpit made of plain wood. Embossed onto the front in brass was the Hezbollah logo. We were allowed to pose for photographs behind the pulpit, making various intense facial expressions and gestures, as Ali and Mohammed looked on, bemused.
After all of our poses had been committed to digital celluloid for posterity, we repaired to the courtyard where, in the warmth of the dwindling sun, we descended on the Hezbollah Gift Shop like package tourists docking at Aswan in the summer.
One wall held a DVD rack. DVDs of Hassan Nasrullah (the leader of Hezbollah) giving speeches were side by side with documentaries about the Party of God.
Nestled in amongst these more innocuous offerings was a two and a half hour compilation of videos of suicide bombings carried out against Israel. I asked Ali about it. He grinned widely and made a pushing-away gesture with his hands coupled to sound of an explosion.
"Yisrael," he grinned. "Boom."
The DVD cost LL40,000, just under 20 euros. Apparently it sells very well but mostly to visiting Arabs and dignitaries. The locals and members of the Hez just watch the re-runs on Al-Manar, the Hezbollah TV channel.
Across from the DVD rack were rows of shelves with stacks and stacks of audio tapes. Being Shia, Hezbollah don't listen to music apart from military marches, so the existence of the tapes fascinated me. I was told that they were speeches by Nasrullah and Khomeini. On the shelf above the tapes were the special brocade hats that Hezbollah members wear, stacked next to Winnie the Pooh and Strawberry Shortcake hats.
I pointed at the Pooh hat and looked at Ali askance. He held his hand out, palm down, at waist height and shrugged. You know, for kids.
Books, keyrings, necklaces, tapes, photographs, posters, woodcuts - nothing was beyond the scope of the Hezbollah Gift Shop.
This was not a bunch of bearded crazies in the hills with weapons from Iran. These guys have a radio station, a TV station, a merchandising line, a corporate philosophy. To appropriate a Madison Avenue term, they're "sexy".
I asked Ali what their bestseller was. He asked to who. I asked him to tell me the best seller to the Shia mosque-goers and the best seller to Hezbollah members. The discerning Shia mosque-goer in Baalbek likes the look of the scimitar necklace inscribed with Ali's name and prayer. They like it equally in silver and in retro woodcut. The Hezbollah member-about-town, on the other hand, fancies a much more prosaic object. The most popular seller to members of Hezbollah is a keyring/mobile phone lanyard that is solar-activated, flashing an image of Nasrullah and the Hezbollah logo when exposed to sunlight. In true globalist fashion, it is also the only product in the gift shop that is not made in Lebanon. It is Made in China.
The attitude that Ali affected once behind the counter was not that of a zealot by any stretch of the imagination, but rather the same approach as any salesman I've ever met. He forced me to try on a hat and then clucked and flapped his hands about how good I look, even taking a picture of me on his phone and showing it to me since there was no mirror to hand. He tried to upsell CL and myself, but in the end only shifted a couple of keyrings. As we took our leave, there were handshakes all round and cheerful waves as we made our way back to the car. On the way out, I noticed a massive mosaic of Khomeini and Khamenei waving to the masses. The backdrop was the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
I looked back at the gift shop. Ali stood in the entrance, waving cheerfully. A passing Hezbollah member shook our hands, politely asked where we were from and then gave us some fruit he had just picked.
We asked Mohammed to drop us a couple of blocks before the hotel so that we could go for a stroll. CL and I wanted to take pictures of the numerous posters and billboards decrying the martyrdom of the Hezbollah Number Two, recently assasinated by the Israelis.
I was struck by his resemblance to Omar Bakri, the Syrian citizen recently deported from Britain for exhorting the young Muslim population to become martyrs. There was also a touch of the bearded Alexei Sayle about him.
We found a quiet shwarma joint and ate our dinner, surrounded by young men wearing Hezbollah gear, eating and watching the news. When Hariri appeared on the screen, giving a speech denouncing Hezbollah's actions, half the clientele of the shop walked out. On the table, pushed up against the wall, was a small plastic mosque with a slot to donate money to the cause. When you put money in, it played a short burst of the call to prayer. I looked around. There was one on every table.
Night had fallen while we had been eating. On our way back to the hotel, we saw a couple of young girls standing on a street corner. In contrast to all the other women we had seen here in this very religious Shia town, they were clad in tight jeans and strap tops. As we passed by their corner on the other side of the street, a car pulled up and one of them walked to the window. She leaned down, spoke to the driver for a moment and then waved her friend over. They both got in and the car drove off. Now, I'm not saying they were hookers, but...
Captain Libya and I settled down at the hotel to read our books. Kris went out for a brief stroll. He was gone for over an hour. When he got back he was very excited.
"Hezbollah gave me free batteries!" he cried jubilantly.
We enquired as to the provenance of the said boon.
Kris had been walking down the street. A guy came up to him and asked him where he was from. He said Poland. The guy asked him what he did for a living. Kris gave him some answer or other. As the questions continued, more and more guys arrived until Kris realised he was surrounded by thirty or so very stern but friendly guys, some of whom were packing heat. They asked if he had a camera. He replied in the affirmative. They asked if he had taken any pictures in Baalbek. He again said that he had. They asked to see the pictures. Now, wouldn't you know it, but Kris's camera batteries had just died and were back at the hotel charging. The Hezbollah guys went and got him AA batteries. The first set were piss weak and Kris said he wanted proper batteries. The Hezbollah guy apologised and returned a few minutes later with a known brand. They fired up Kris's camera, checked his pictures, gave him back his camera, offered him a soft drink, chatted for a few minutes and disappeared. Kris had burned rubber back to the hotel to share the story.
We talked for a while about how strange it was, this gulf between what these people really did and the way they acted to people they didn't perceive as a threat. It was not necessarily a surprise that they behaved politely, but the level of suspicion was so low as to be almost unnoticeable and as for aggression, we had not been on the receiving end of even a dark glance, let alone a raised voice.
The following day, Kris and CL were off to Beirut. I would be returning to Syria, to Lattakia and from there to Damascus. We dozed off, our heads full of Hezbollah souvenirs, polite gunmen and the possibilities of tomorrow.
I got up, dressed and admired the view from my "bedroom".The other guys were up and packing their gear. We ate another can of hummus and another can of luncheon meat. Last night had not been an abberation. The breakfast was as abysmal as the dinner. Horror.
We picked our way up the side of the mountain, pressing upwards at an average angle of 60% or so. CL and Kris were in decent shape and pressed on. After the first ten minutes I looked like I had just stepped out of a shower. Absolutely drenched in sweat, I stumbled and wheezed my way up the mountainside. The views were spectacular.
The path up the mountain let out into someone's back yard. We paused there to get our breath and drink some water. A man sitting by his garage told us we were 7km from Bcharre. That made sense, since we had left Bcharre to come this way. Now we had to walk back.We got to the church in the centre of Bcharre town at a touch before 13:00. We made it known that we were headed for Baalbek and after a flurry of negotiations, we had a taxi for LL50,000 (25 euros). There are no bus or minibus services to Baalbek from Bcharre. The taxi ride would take us from Bcharre in the centre of the Kadisha Valley back up to the Cedars and then over the top of the snowy mountains there into the Bekaa Valley. Baalbek is venerated as one of the most ancient cities in the world and has one of the best preserved temples in existence.
After passing the Cedars, the taxi climbed up and up into the clouds. The green of the Kadisha Valley gave way to the brown rocks and dust of the mountains. Driving over the pass between the peaks, the road was lined with snow, sometimes as high as six or seven feet on either side.
This road is impassable in winter. The snow that remained ended cleanly at the road where plows had cleared the way for spring traffic. We reached the top of the mountain range that separates the Bekaa and Kadisha Valleys. 
The taxi stopped and we got out to take pictures of the incredible views. The wind was brutal and cold. 
It has been a steamy 26C in the Kadisha Valley earlier but now, a scant forty-five minute drive away, it was closer to 12C, less with the wind. We were parked at the highest peak. The clouds were level with us and in some places lower. To the right of us were a series of snow-capped peaks wreathed in clouds. The road, lined with snow, stretched away into the distance. The mountainsides were sheer, a dusty orange red and fell away to reveal a seemingly endless expanse of desolate desert, broken only by the occasional lonely homestead. Pictures in hand, we piled back into the cab and proceeded to Baalbek, home of the fabled ruins of old and also the heart of Hezbollah's Shia support base.The taxi dropped us outside the ruins. We were immediately set upon by a lone tout offering Hezbollah t-shirts and flags. The town was deserted apart from the locals going about their business. Hotel and cafe owners lounged dispiritedly on the steps of their establishments. Three days before we arrived in Baalbek, the hotels had been full and the shops and cafes were doing a roaring trade. Touts couldn't price their t-shirts and flags high enough and the stream of tourists was gearing up for the always profitable summer season. Now, we were the only game in town.
We dumped our stuff at the Hotel Shouman, run by the sweet-natured but weirdly apologetic Mohammed Shouman. He showed us his booking chart. Like an eraser had been run down the page, all the names ended three days before. He offered us the best room in the hotel with a great view of the ruins. Then he knocked LL3,000 off the price. Three days before he hadn't even had a room going spare. Now he was virtually begging us to stay at his place as opposed to someone else's.
We set off for the ruins. To Captain Libya's chagrin, they are the only ruins in Lebanon that don't offer student discounts. We paid our money and went in. With the exception of the security guard who had brought his kids to work with him, we were the only people there. It was amazing. Legends surrounding the ruins at Baalbek describe their use as anything from temples to Jupiter and Bacchus to altars of blood sacrifice and wild Roman orgies. The disorganisation of the ruins was refreshing. Stones lie where they fell, strewn around the grounds as if by a giant hand. You can walk, climb and sit where you want and whatever the angle, the view is always rewarding and exotic. The remains of the unfinished temple of Jupiter, columns jutting up like ribs, stand in the centre of the complex. Radiating out from there are courtyards, buildings, staircases, hidden passages that dead end in stone corners and the mind-blowing structure that the plaques refer to as a temple of Bacchus.
Purportedly used for drinking and orgies in ancient times, then used as a dungeon in the Middle Ages, whatever the purpose or provenance it is a spectacular building. Complete in every way except for the roof and internal furniture, sitting in the centre of the temple was like travelling back in time. The absence of tourists, children and school groups made it all the more pleasurable.Like the ruins and temples of Egypt, Baalbek is marked with graffiti that provides a kind of historical record all its own. Carvings of names and countries as far back as 1861 add a certain well-tramped cheapness to the ruins that make them more lovable. Somehow, the idea that our generation isn't the first to desecrate works of art with self-referential scribbling is very comforting. Another curiosity is why the graffiti only goes back to 1861 if the ruins have been here for so long. Maybe graffiti was invented in 1861. Who knew?
After finishing our exploration of the ruins, we returned to the hotel where Mohammed was waiting with an offer we simply could not refuse.
"Big stone?" Mohammed asked hopefully, jiggling his car keys enticingly.
CL, Kris and I looked at each other. "What?"
"Big stone," Mohammed elaborated, nodding encouragingly. "Biggest in the world."
There was an awkward pause.
"You want to see? We can take my car."
CL and Kris were still unconvinced but I was all over that like a cheap suit. Moments later we were in Mohammed's ancient Mercedes on our way to see the self-proclaimed Biggest Stone in the World. Upon arriving there, two things became very clear. First, this stone was very, very, very big. Secondly, it seemed a little too small to be the biggest in the world, but the look of pride on Mohammed's face forced me into exaggerated appreciations of its size.
"Wow!" I cried. "That's a big fucking stone!"
Mohammed beamed. I motioned at CL and Kris.
"Yeah," they added, looking at each other and then me. "That's really big. I've never seen a stone that big." etc.
Pictures were taken of each of us in various "hilarious" poses - "lifting" the stone, being "crushed" by the stone. Eventually, even Mohammed's enthusiasm was waning and we pressed on.
On the way back in the car, we spotted a beautiful blue mosque, built in the Shia style most popularly exhibited in Iran. I asked Mohammed if we could have a look. He parked, walked through the gate, spoke to the guards and came back to us. We would be allowed access to the mosque. I asked why we needed special permission. He explained that this was a Hezbollah mosque, built with Iranian funding. The mosque grounds also played host to that most fabled of creatures, the white whale that Captain Libya and I had sought throughout our visit to Lebanon - the Hezbollah Gift Shop.
Was it open? You betzler.The mosque was exquisite inside, hung with crystal chandeliers, the light from the setting sun casting tall beams of lights across the thick carpet. The walls and ceilings were a mosaic of coloured tiles and tiny mirrors, giving the entire room a disco ball effect that was quite something.
The centre of the room was given over to a shrine that glowed with a green light. In the shrine was a coffin. Mohammed introduced a member of Hezbollah named Ali who explained the coffin to us. The coffin, as far as his limited English could convey, was the coffin of a child martyr and the mosque as a whole was dedicated to the children of Fatima. Later, in Damascus, I would see the same filigreed cage filled with green light, the same draped coffin, the same money strewn over the top, in the Ummayad Mosque.Ali walked us around the mosque, pointing out features and answering our questions either in broken English or through Mohammed as an equally bad interpreter. Around Ali's neck was a huge necklace in the shape of a scimitar, inscribed with the name of the Prophet Ali and a prayer in his name.
These necklaces are apparently very popular. The Hezbollah Gift Shop sells loads of them.In the corner of the mosque was a pulpit made of plain wood. Embossed onto the front in brass was the Hezbollah logo. We were allowed to pose for photographs behind the pulpit, making various intense facial expressions and gestures, as Ali and Mohammed looked on, bemused.
After all of our poses had been committed to digital celluloid for posterity, we repaired to the courtyard where, in the warmth of the dwindling sun, we descended on the Hezbollah Gift Shop like package tourists docking at Aswan in the summer.One wall held a DVD rack. DVDs of Hassan Nasrullah (the leader of Hezbollah) giving speeches were side by side with documentaries about the Party of God.
Nestled in amongst these more innocuous offerings was a two and a half hour compilation of videos of suicide bombings carried out against Israel. I asked Ali about it. He grinned widely and made a pushing-away gesture with his hands coupled to sound of an explosion."Yisrael," he grinned. "Boom."
The DVD cost LL40,000, just under 20 euros. Apparently it sells very well but mostly to visiting Arabs and dignitaries. The locals and members of the Hez just watch the re-runs on Al-Manar, the Hezbollah TV channel.
Across from the DVD rack were rows of shelves with stacks and stacks of audio tapes. Being Shia, Hezbollah don't listen to music apart from military marches, so the existence of the tapes fascinated me. I was told that they were speeches by Nasrullah and Khomeini. On the shelf above the tapes were the special brocade hats that Hezbollah members wear, stacked next to Winnie the Pooh and Strawberry Shortcake hats.
I pointed at the Pooh hat and looked at Ali askance. He held his hand out, palm down, at waist height and shrugged. You know, for kids.Books, keyrings, necklaces, tapes, photographs, posters, woodcuts - nothing was beyond the scope of the Hezbollah Gift Shop.
This was not a bunch of bearded crazies in the hills with weapons from Iran. These guys have a radio station, a TV station, a merchandising line, a corporate philosophy. To appropriate a Madison Avenue term, they're "sexy".I asked Ali what their bestseller was. He asked to who. I asked him to tell me the best seller to the Shia mosque-goers and the best seller to Hezbollah members. The discerning Shia mosque-goer in Baalbek likes the look of the scimitar necklace inscribed with Ali's name and prayer. They like it equally in silver and in retro woodcut. The Hezbollah member-about-town, on the other hand, fancies a much more prosaic object. The most popular seller to members of Hezbollah is a keyring/mobile phone lanyard that is solar-activated, flashing an image of Nasrullah and the Hezbollah logo when exposed to sunlight. In true globalist fashion, it is also the only product in the gift shop that is not made in Lebanon. It is Made in China.
The attitude that Ali affected once behind the counter was not that of a zealot by any stretch of the imagination, but rather the same approach as any salesman I've ever met. He forced me to try on a hat and then clucked and flapped his hands about how good I look, even taking a picture of me on his phone and showing it to me since there was no mirror to hand. He tried to upsell CL and myself, but in the end only shifted a couple of keyrings. As we took our leave, there were handshakes all round and cheerful waves as we made our way back to the car. On the way out, I noticed a massive mosaic of Khomeini and Khamenei waving to the masses. The backdrop was the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
I looked back at the gift shop. Ali stood in the entrance, waving cheerfully. A passing Hezbollah member shook our hands, politely asked where we were from and then gave us some fruit he had just picked.We asked Mohammed to drop us a couple of blocks before the hotel so that we could go for a stroll. CL and I wanted to take pictures of the numerous posters and billboards decrying the martyrdom of the Hezbollah Number Two, recently assasinated by the Israelis.
I was struck by his resemblance to Omar Bakri, the Syrian citizen recently deported from Britain for exhorting the young Muslim population to become martyrs. There was also a touch of the bearded Alexei Sayle about him.We found a quiet shwarma joint and ate our dinner, surrounded by young men wearing Hezbollah gear, eating and watching the news. When Hariri appeared on the screen, giving a speech denouncing Hezbollah's actions, half the clientele of the shop walked out. On the table, pushed up against the wall, was a small plastic mosque with a slot to donate money to the cause. When you put money in, it played a short burst of the call to prayer. I looked around. There was one on every table.
Night had fallen while we had been eating. On our way back to the hotel, we saw a couple of young girls standing on a street corner. In contrast to all the other women we had seen here in this very religious Shia town, they were clad in tight jeans and strap tops. As we passed by their corner on the other side of the street, a car pulled up and one of them walked to the window. She leaned down, spoke to the driver for a moment and then waved her friend over. They both got in and the car drove off. Now, I'm not saying they were hookers, but...
Captain Libya and I settled down at the hotel to read our books. Kris went out for a brief stroll. He was gone for over an hour. When he got back he was very excited.
"Hezbollah gave me free batteries!" he cried jubilantly.
We enquired as to the provenance of the said boon.
Kris had been walking down the street. A guy came up to him and asked him where he was from. He said Poland. The guy asked him what he did for a living. Kris gave him some answer or other. As the questions continued, more and more guys arrived until Kris realised he was surrounded by thirty or so very stern but friendly guys, some of whom were packing heat. They asked if he had a camera. He replied in the affirmative. They asked if he had taken any pictures in Baalbek. He again said that he had. They asked to see the pictures. Now, wouldn't you know it, but Kris's camera batteries had just died and were back at the hotel charging. The Hezbollah guys went and got him AA batteries. The first set were piss weak and Kris said he wanted proper batteries. The Hezbollah guy apologised and returned a few minutes later with a known brand. They fired up Kris's camera, checked his pictures, gave him back his camera, offered him a soft drink, chatted for a few minutes and disappeared. Kris had burned rubber back to the hotel to share the story.
We talked for a while about how strange it was, this gulf between what these people really did and the way they acted to people they didn't perceive as a threat. It was not necessarily a surprise that they behaved politely, but the level of suspicion was so low as to be almost unnoticeable and as for aggression, we had not been on the receiving end of even a dark glance, let alone a raised voice.
The following day, Kris and CL were off to Beirut. I would be returning to Syria, to Lattakia and from there to Damascus. We dozed off, our heads full of Hezbollah souvenirs, polite gunmen and the possibilities of tomorrow.
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