by Guy Stagg
At the same time he emptied glass after glass of vodka. When he offered me some, I turned him down. Then he explained: ‘I was seven years in Russia. In Ukraine. I went for work. So now I drink vodka.’
‘What work was that?’
‘Vodka,’ Rami repeated, ‘every day. And women,’ he added, ‘every day. Every day for seven years.’ He stared at his glass. ‘I swear to you I fucked a thousand women. Too many.’ Fr Joseph’s words played in my thoughts: The most beautiful thing in life is choice. ‘So now I am married,’ Rami went on. ‘It’s better that way.’ Will I go to heaven, or will I go to hell? Will I live in sin, or will I pray to God? ‘Now I have come home. Ehden is my home.’
More plates of food, more bottles of vodka, coffee and chocolate and a pudding made from pastry, pistachios and cream. Fr Joseph talked and Rami slurred and Marie-Rose urged me to have one last helping. Candlelight flickered off the copper fittings and one of the guests was always laughing, yet the whole meal had a delinquent energy that was neither drink nor delight, but something closer to desperation. I began to share in the frantic mood, as if this evening was our last together, and we feared the moment when the party would end.
Then it was midnight. Fr Joseph stood to leave.
As we walked back to the presbytery, he announced that he was moving to Rome in January. When I asked why, he said: ‘America, Europe – they do not care about the Middle East. Sometimes I swear they do not even like us. In Syria the Christians are being slaughtered – slaughtered, do you know what that means? The worst kind of death. Muslims help other Muslims, but Christian countries do nothing.’
I was curious how long he would stay in Italy, but Fr Joseph did not know. Perhaps one year, perhaps five, perhaps he would never return.
We went the rest of the way in silence. The cafes on the high street were empty now, their tables cleared, their lights burnt out. When we reached the presbytery, the priest placed his hands on my shoulders, resting his weight against me. I wondered if he was holding back tears, or trying to smother his anger, but then he wished me luck and turned away.
The apartment below the presbytery contained a bedroom, a bathroom, a dining room and a kitchen. Inside, the air was damp and the curtains drawn. I spent all night on the bathroom floor, knees on the tiles, knuckles on the toilet bowl, throwing up every mouthful of the dinner party. Then, as the curtains fattened with dawn light, I lay on the bedroom carpet, stomach aching and empty, astonished at how sick I had been.
I left Ehden around midday. A road ran west out of town, spiralling down the side of a mountain. After twelve kilometres it slipped between twin flanks of eroded sandstone and entered a narrow valley. Orchards layered the ground below, and the slopes were shuttered with pine. A monastery was propped above the orchards: an Italianate cellblock with an ornate church set into the cliffs and storehouses notching the hillsides.
This was Mar Antonios, the richest of Lebanon’s religious houses.
A few visitors had gathered near the gatehouse. One of them explained how the monastery used to be a pilgrim shrine for the country’s lunatics, who would spend nights chained up in the grotto of St Antony.
As the afternoon light became dense, the monastery buildings blushed. At five o’clock a line of monks filed into the church for evening prayers. The outer wall was striped like a duomo facade, with a triple bell tower propped on top, hewn from a single monolith of stone. The cave behind formed the church nave, its piers made from loose-packed stone, its apse from mortared rubble. A barrel vault supported the front half of the ceiling, but the rear half was bare rock.
I sat at the back, struggling to stay awake. Some parts of the service resembled Orthodox vespers, other parts reminded me of Catholic liturgy, but the prayers were all in Syriac – an Aramaic dialect close to the language used by Christ. They were softer than the prayers at Balamand, delicate and dragging, like the hither and thither of waves, or the cymbal hiss of the surf. Beneath these sounds I could hear a silence louder than anything else in the valley – silence that was presence, that was purpose. It seemed to fill the monastery, deadening the air with a heavy hush. At that point, the unease I had felt since Tripoli became a settled calm.
When the service was done I was shown to a bedroom above the gatehouse. Although laity were not allowed in the main cellblock, the monks made an exception and invited me to dinner. Their refectory was a kind of burrow, with a curved ceiling and windowless walls. I mentioned that I had been unwell, but they laid out metal bowls of soup and bread, noodles and beans. So I ate what I could, listening to a potted history of the Maronite Church.
The Church was founded in the fourth century by a Syrian hermit called St Maron and brought to Lebanon by his disciple, Abraham of Cyrrhus. Its first members settled in the Holy Valley, which kept them safe during the Arab conquest of the region. Then, in the crusader era, Maronite bishops affirmed their loyalty to Rome and joined the Catholic family. ‘Solitaries were the heart of our Church, right from the beginning,’ said Peter, the novice sitting on my right. ‘Search the Holy Valley and you won’t find a single cave that wasn’t a hermitage. You might even find a few hermits.’
Although born in Beirut, Peter had grown up in Sydney. He had none of the mild, earnest manner I associated with young monks, but an easy smile and a slack sort of charm. I presumed this last comment was a joke, yet my companion kept talking, describing three members of the monastery who lived in remote corners of the valley. ‘No electricity, no technology, no food except what they grow themselves. And only one meal a day – plus five hours’ sleep, two hours’ study and three hours’ work. The rest of the time they pray.’
‘Fourteen hours?’
‘No holidays either, unless they get sick.’
Peter’s face looked dazed with delight, as if he could not believe what he was telling me. I asked whether he wanted to become a hermit too.
He paused. ‘It’s not my decision.’
‘You do!’
He gave an embarrassed grin. ‘The hermits who live in Qadisha are wise men, scholars. Often our bishops visit them for advice. The rest of the Church – the monks, the priests – we’re inspired by their example. When they die, many of the brothers at Mar Antonios hope to be chosen next.’
There was something familiar about this: not the hermit’s quiet devotion, but Peter’s awed description, as if the solitude were somehow reckless, even heroic. The nearest thing to martyrdom. It was the same model of surrender that had shaped my own understanding of the religious life, until I realized that sacrifice alone could not sustain a faith. But, I asked, wasn’t living in community one of the principles of monasticism? How could you practise virtue when living alone? And didn’t Jesus leave the desert after forty days?
‘We don’t enter the monastery to escape the world,’ Peter replied. ‘We enter the monastery because of our love for God. A hermit’s heart is filled with love. He lives alone to spend all his time in God’s presence.’ The grin faltered for a moment. ‘But that calling is a gift. I cannot choose for myself.’
Next morning I decided to visit one of the hermits. When mass was finished I left Mar Antonios and climbed onto the spur of rock dividing the monastery from the Holy Valley. A sign mapped the medieval foundations along the valley floor, as well as the ruined sanctuaries let into its sides. Below the sign an arrow pointed towards a narrow staircase, tripping off the spur and through the clouds.
From the top of the staircase I could see Qadisha stretching away to the east – a ten-kilometre rift cut into the Mt Lebanon Range. It looked tropical, with soaring slopes, frothing woodland, and a veil of clouded vapour between.
Although I had copied the map into my notebook, I could not make sense of the scenery below. I could not guess the location of Notre Dame de Qannoubine, the oldest of the valley monasteries, housing the tombs of eighteen Maronite patriarchs; nor the monastery of Mar Lichaa, a fourteenth-century sanctuary with cavern chambers and halls of carved sandstone; nor the mountainto
p refuge of Mar Sarkis, perched at fifteen hundred metres; nor the abandoned foundations of Mar Assia and Mar Aboun, of Mar Girgis and Mar Yuhanna; nor the ruined refuges of Mar Mora and Deir Es-Salib. All I could see was the cloud thrown up like seaspray from the crashing cliffs.
Midway down, the staircase divided. One half turned left towards the monasteries, the other half went right onto a footpath. Turning right, I glimpsed a decayed hive of hermit caves on the slopes opposite and heard the rasping of the river below.
After a while the path became a paved walkway with metal railings hanging from mortared cairns. It skirted a narrow allotment and entered a tiny courtyard. Three cells occupied one side of the yard, embedded into a wall of sheer sandstone. Wooden benches ringed the remaining sides, with more metal railings guarding against the fall.
One of the cells contained a cave chapel the size of a cupboard, its walls wrinkled like peachstone. Each ledge was adorned with a painted plaster statue, and votive candles threw creased shadows round the room.
A man little bigger than a child bent over at one of the pews. Yesterday evening Peter told me about him. I remembered that he was born in Colombia to a wealthy family, but now owned nothing except his cassock. And that, before coming to Qadisha, he had been a doctor of psychology and a professor of theology. That he was in his late seventies, that he spoke six languages, and that his name was Fr Dario Escobar. Peter also told me about the pilgrims who visited Fr Dario, asking when they would get married and who would win the presidential election – mistaking the hermit for a soothsayer. And how he woke before dawn each morning, watched the sun breaking open the valley, heard birdsong rising from the forest below, and knew – not hoped, not believed, but knew – this place was paradise.
The little figure went on kneeling, head bowed, shoulders hunched. Fourteen hours a day! I was hoping to speak with him – to tell him the stories of exile that I heard in Balamand, or describe the scenes of wreckage that I witnessed in Tripoli. I wanted to explain how my understanding of monastic life had changed when I learnt that it was not an escape from the world, but a confrontation with the self. Alone there was no hiding from your failings, meaning you dropped deep into the past like diving down to touch the cold sea floor. However, I did not wish to interrupt his prayers, so I sat by the door and listened. I listened to the wax stuttering off the candles and the creaking of the hermit’s breath. In that moment the chapel did not seem a lonely place, but a theatre of living voices. As if we spoke without words. As if you heard me in the silence.
When I stepped outside, the cloud was burning off and sunlight filled the valley.
I left Qadisha in the last days of August, hiking the high road south. The temperature stayed the same, but the light was piercing, and the afternoon’s walk left me sunblind. Ahead, the landscape was craggy and the settlements sparse. Cedars freckled the ridgelines and boulders sat stranded on the slopes. Every hour I passed another army checkpoint – more red-and-white oil drums, more spools of rusting wire, but each one unmanned. The safety I had felt in the Holy Valley became a nagging fear.
That evening I was offered a bed in a roadside cafe. The owner woke me next morning with markouk bread and apple jam. Over breakfast he asked about my route, but when I opened my map he shook his head. ‘Aaqora is Christian,’ he said, pointing at a village five kilometres down the road. ‘Afqa is Muslim,’ he added, sliding his finger another five kilometres. Then he tugged my arm. ‘Shia. Hezbollah.’ Finally he pointed at Kesrouane, five kilometres after that. ‘In Aaqora you must ask for a taxi to drive you to Kesrouane. Understand?’
I wasn’t sure how to respond. In the past I had ignored such warnings, but that was no longer possible, for since Tripoli I was aware of the risks that I faced. However, I would not skip ten kilometres on the basis of a stranger’s prejudice, so I thanked my host and hiked off.
The road ran towards a crescent of cliffs at the head of the Abraham Valley – a limestone sail billowing towards the coast. Morning light coloured the stone like a Rothko canvas, bleeding slabs of orange and pink. Villages hung from the base of each cliff, and litter glistened in the streambeds below.
Approaching Afqa, I noticed a gutted chapel beside the road. The niche above the door was blackened, and the smell of wet bark lingered in the doorway. A faceless statue of the Virgin Mary stood half-hidden in the shadows.
Banners were draped over the village entrance, with images of injured soldiers printed on the fabric, their bodies broken, eyes closed. The houses were also decorated, each flag bearing the same design: green lettering circled by a globe, a book and an assault rifle. I could not read the letters, but I recognized the emblem. Hezbollah, the Party of God.
A pair of elderly men with clipped beards and careworn faces sat outside the cafe. I called out to them – Salaam Alaikum! – but received no reply. There was no other sound except the scrunch of my boots on the gravel and the mutter of flags in the breeze.
As I neared the far side of the village, a sputtering engine interrupted the quiet. A motorbike slowed at my shoulder, the driver urging me onto the back. His teeth were cracked and his fingers purple-scabbed, yet I could not tell if his voice was friendly or frightened.
He spoke to me a second time, a third, making haggling gestures with his left hand. I shook my head, legs straining to keep the pace.
Eventually his mouth snapped shut and he sputtered off.
The next two villages were the same: tatty houses garlanded with propaganda. Posters lined the roads between, stapled onto boards and staked into the ground. More portraits of soldiers, their lips pink, cheeks pale, beards a feathery black – yet the ink was blurred, the images pixelated.
By the third village I was marching hard, my lungs clamped, my legs burning. On the northern side of the valley Maronite churches were pinned to the hills, but on this side I saw nothing except flags, banners and the parade of martyrs’ faces. I stared at the ground, trying to calculate the distance I had covered. Seven kilometres? Eight? Not enough – but if I started running I knew the panic would overwhelm me. Instead I kept my eyes down, until the posters petered out and all I could see was banked earth and scorched brush. Then I spotted the striped drums of a checkpoint up ahead. When I noticed that this one was manned, I felt a sudden surge of relief. Beyond the checkpoint, a street of scrappy buildings marked the outskirts of Kesrouane.
I hoped my sickness in Ehden was a one-off. However, as I approached the country’s midway point, I became dizzy and flushed. The mountain summits swayed above me, and the limestone tableland was unsteady at my feet. Sometimes I shivered for no reason; sometimes my insides felt tender, melting. Skirting the eastern edge of Mt Sannine, I kept having to run from the road and squat among the umbrella pines. I tried not to eat, but that made me weak, so I ate and the diarrhoea dehydrated me. My pace slowed to a shuffle, and, no matter how many times I spat, my mouth was gummed with saliva.
In early September I passed a series of Christian towns built on shallow hills. Hammana was one of them. It had a convent, a monastery, a school and three churches, but the only spare bed was at the fire station. So I spent Monday evening bunking down with the civil defence team – three volunteers in their early twenties. There was Louis, the team leader, who had chubby hands and chubby cheeks, and who counted using fingers and thumbs. There was Jules, the deputy, who spent the whole evening sipping bottles of Almaza beer. And there was Osama, who had a swollen stomach and a helpless smile, and who claimed to be a captain in the Lebanese Army. They welcomed me with a flurry of hospitality – cups of coffee, cans of Coke and three different brands of cigarette – as if they had been waiting all week for this chance.
Jules was interested in my journey – not the route of the walk, but the transit between each country. He asked complicated questions about passport restrictions and travel times, and kept reminding me that the Lebanon–Israel border was closed. He smirked when I mentioned the ferry to Tripoli, scowled when I discussed the cost of a Turkish visa and, wh
en I explained how I would detour round the border (a bus to Beirut, a plane to Amman, and a coach to northern Israel), he shook his head sadly.
The office contained a television, two sofas and an antique fridge. Insect nets peeled from the windows, and the ceiling fan squeaked as it stirred the warm air. My hosts sat on the sofas, smoking and squabbling over the remote.
At nine o’clock Louis left the office, returning with two roast chickens, four bags of chips and six servings of mezze in styrofoam pots. Osama loaded my plate with fistfuls of food, and then everyone ate at a furious pace. Eight minutes later they leant back on the sofas, fingers splayed across their bellies. Soon Louis and Jules were bickering again. A few days ago the British Parliament voted against airstrikes in Syria, but America and France were still debating the possibility, and the two friends disagreed about what would happen next. Their argument was held in English for my benefit, which meant swear words translated using online dictionaries and obscene jokes acted out with office equipment: rulers, staplers, fire extinguishers etc.
By this point the room was shrouded in cigarette smoke. And, when Osama joined in, the conversation splintered:
‘– waiting to know what America will do. If Obama drops bombs on Assad, then Hezbollah fires rockets on Israel, then Israel sends soldiers into Beirut, then we have war –’
‘– we go hiking in the Beqaa Valley. In Syria! Why not –’
‘– already the Americans are sending their diplomats home. My cousin, he works in the embassy, he knows the day –’
‘– until the hair grows over my whole face. My friends say I look like an imam, but I tell them I cannot cut my beard because I am becoming a monk. So they arrange a party, big party, dancing, drinking, the whole night –’
‘– will teach you how to speak Arabic. Egyptian, Saudi, all kinds of Arabic –’