by Guy Stagg
‘– afterwards they ask me: you want to be monk? So I tell them: before I was joking, but now I have no choice –’
‘– say you stayed with nuns. Otherwise we will be in too much trouble –’
‘– impossible to walk past Jezzine. The army will not allow it. Even if you have a pass, they will tell you –’
‘– like we are living on the edge of destruction. Syria is not the reason. Israel is the reason. Wherever you go in Lebanon you see buildings destroyed, bridges destroyed, and you think the civil war is to blame. But Israel is to blame –’
After an hour the conversation lapsed. There was no light in the room now except for the blue pulse of the television screen. An episode of Arab Idol was playing with the sound turned down, and I could hear Osama dragging on a cigarette, hear Jules scraping the wrapper from a beer bottle, hear Louis licking the grease off his fingers. Hear the fridge thrumming, the fan squeaking, and the mosquitoes squealing too close to my face. Beneath this restless chorus, one of the men was still speaking, but I could not understand him, and he could not help me.
Though I had taken antibiotics, the sickness was getting worse, and next morning my stomach felt damaged. Walking away from Hammana, my thoughts became feverish. A narrow ridgeline formed the last fifty kilometres of the Mt Lebanon Range, sagging with copses of cedar, oak and pine. After that my route tipped into the Beqaa Valley. Last night Louis warned that I would not be allowed into the valley without a pass and Jules claimed that no pass would be given. Meanwhile Osama listed all the dreadful things that would happen if I were kidnapped. My hosts’ paranoia was easy to explain – there were few Christian settlements in southern Lebanon – yet their predictions stayed with me, sticking in my thoughts, my throat.
At teatime I came to a village called Barouk. The streets were filled with signs for a cedar park midway up the mountain. Scanning my map, it seemed possible to hike through the park and make Maasser El Chouf – my next destination – before nightfall.
I followed the signs out of the village and began climbing. My plan, however, was hopeless. As the road rose higher it swept back and forth between chopped-up chunks of rock, doubling and redoubling the distance. It took two hours to reach the fir trees on the rim of the park, and when I arrived at the entrance, the gates were closed. A ranger in a nearby cabin explained that the reserve shut at six each evening. Although I tried to protest – it was just five thirty – he told me there was no route to Maasser El Chouf anyway.
So, back the way I had come.
As I retreated from the gates, my insides seemed to spill. Hips clenched, I ran from the road, yet the mountainside offered no cover. Instead I had to climb to the boundary of the reserve and rush between the fir trees, slipping the rucksack from my shoulders, plucking the tissues from my pockets, and then bowing to the ground with left arm propped behind me, right hand in front, heels kicked, knees wide, shorts rucked round my ankles – but it was too late and there was shit on my shorts, on my socks, on my boots. Shit on my hand – I could smell it, the stink of it. Sweat on my skin and dust in my eyes, and tears too because now I was crying. Crying at the shame and crying at the pain and crying at the fear as well. All this time I had been afraid. Afraid of crowded cities and lonely villages. Afraid of posters and flags, of checkpoints and police, of blood eating a man’s features from his face. I wanted it over, oh when would it be over, how much longer must I walk this way—
Cedars. A hundred metres above.
Three, four cedars, their branches splayed out like a hand.
Four cedars of Lebanon, with boughs waving gently towards me.
When I had cleaned myself, I moved up to the nearest tree. The air was warm here, sheltered from the wind, but the ground was cool beneath matted shadows. Grass grew at the foot of the tree, and the fallen needles were soft as down. I could smell dry bark, damp earth and the rich green reek of the forest.
Lying among the roots, tears still blotted my sight. It was not the accident that upset me, but those spoilt years before the walk. I worried that I was walking simply to punish myself, to purge the guilt of the suicide attempt. Yet, as I lay under the trees, I began to picture a little boy far from home, wandering lost through the world – and my fierce humiliation faded, giving way to a gentle sympathy.
I looked up at the ancient cedar skin. The undersides of each bough were silvery, and through the branches an afternoon moon chipped the sky. There was little chance I would make Maasser El Chouf tonight, but no matter. I did not feel ashamed any more; instead, I felt very small beneath the cedars. Somewhere in this reserve were trees two thousand years old, offspring of the trees used to build King Solomon’s Temple. The timber felled to frame a house for God.
Over the next few evenings I stayed at a Maronite monastery, a Melkite seminary, and a presbytery in the town of Jezzine. Then I descended into a wide valley, its base flat like the mirrored surface of a lake, and approached the Litani River.
The bridge over the river was guarded by a checkpoint, the checkpoint guarded by a soldier. He refused to let me through, so I sat by the roadside and waited for his officer. But the officer simply confirmed that, even though the checkpoint was forty kilometres from the border, I could hike no farther without a pass. He mentioned an address in Sidon and an interview with military intelligence. He discussed passport copies, hotel bookings, letters of recommendation and week-long delays. Then he said it was unlikely I would be given permission anyway.
I wanted to argue, or else try a different route, but after walking sick for ten days straight my strength was gone. I told myself it was an achievement to get this far, given the spoilt landscape, the warnings and threats, and the mayhem of that first Friday in Tripoli. I told myself the plan was unchanged – I would still fly to Israel, still hike to Jerusalem – yet trudging back to Jezzine all I felt was defeat. But then I reached the town and realized that, despite the obstacles I faced in Lebanon, I had never once tried to abandon the walk. Also, when it seemed I might fall apart, I found consolation in the landscape. In Istanbul the risks had seemed thrilling, for the smoke was only tear gas and the bullets only rubber, but in Lebanon the danger was real. However, the recklessness I remembered from Taksim Square had been replaced by a courage that understood the hazards it faced. I had tested myself. I had overcome the test. It did not mean that a cure was waiting for me in Jerusalem, but it meant I could keep walking without fear of collapse. And maybe that was recovery enough.
Before leaving Lebanon I spent a week in Beirut. Two days after I arrived, the US secretary of state held a press conference in London. During questions he made an offhand comment about Assad’s chemical weapons. If the president gave up his entire stockpile, John Kerry suggested, airstrikes could be avoided. Although unplanned, Russia welcomed the suggestion, convincing the Syrian government to accept. Just like that, the conflict was avoided.
At the end of the week I caught a plane to Amman.
One flight, two coach journeys and three bus rides later, I reached the Golan Heights – the rugged plateau that corners Israel, Lebanon and Syria. From here I joined a chain of footpaths called the Israel National Trail, which would lead me south through Galilee, west towards the coast, south again to Tel Aviv, and inland as far as Jerusalem. Five hundred and sixty-eight kilometres to go.
The trail began in the Hula Valley, an expanse of cultivated plain that bordered the Upper Jordan. Here the yellow hills of southern Lebanon became planted fields netted with irrigation channels. The river ran to the Sea of Galilee, but I did not follow its course, climbing instead into the Naftali Mountains and travelling along the valley’s western flank.
On Monday morning I met three men in their mid-twenties. They were hiking to the Sea of Galilee and asked me to join them. At first I was reluctant – embarrassed by my torn shorts, my collapsing rucksack – but they grinned and laughed and urged me along.
Or, Tal and Eldad had become friends while on national service. When I asked about their time in
the army, Tal, the heftiest and moodiest of the three, said: ‘We were rangers. You know rangers?’ I did not. ‘We dress like trees, carry hundred-pound radios, stand in the woods for a week.’ I told him it sounded like Special Forces. ‘Like Special Forces, yes, but they spend too much time in the gym, we spend too much time like trees.’ And did he enjoy serving in the army? ‘Never. But we have no choice. We have to fight.’
That afternoon I walked with Or. He had fair hair, large teeth and a voice made up of impersonations. As we talked he would shuffle between accents: a cockney, a Scouser, the Queen. And he cooed at my own accent, mimicking each turn of phrase – cheers, course, fine by me. Otherwise he spoke English with a New Jersey twang picked up during a summer in the States, when he sold Dead Sea skincare products door-to-door. America and Israel were the same, he told me, young countries where exiles were welcome. Here you could start your life again.
Every two hours we stopped so that Tal could make coffee on a portable stove. If there was a pomegranate farm nearby, Or would scale the fence to steal some food. But the fruit was too ripe, their skins a sunburnt pink and their flesh beginning to ferment.
After lunch we stopped for longer, Or and Tal napping while Eldad removed a prayer shawl from his rucksack, placed the shawl on his shoulders, and started reading from a pocket copy of the Torah. When the others joked that he would soon become a scholar, he laughed in a vague fashion which suggested it might be true. He also asked questions about my journey, wanting to know how long I had been walking (roughly nine and a half months), what distance I had covered (roughly five thousand kilometres) and what lessons I had learnt along the way. My answers he referred to the Hebrew Bible. The hospitality I had been shown by strangers – yes, I would find this in Scripture – or the realization that faith was something felt as much as thought – this too I would find in Scripture – or the freedom that comes from owning only what you can carry – certainly this could be found in Scripture.
The three friends hiked at a steady pace, telling jokes and teaching me Hebrew. They were easy company, as if we had already crossed mountains and deserts together. Whenever the conversation flagged, Or would perform another impersonation, mimicking farm animals and TV adverts and the cast of an Israeli sitcom.
Our path skirted the crests of hills, occasionally diving into narrow gullies where the air was damp and the oak trees sprawled like something prehistoric. It was late September, yet I saw little trace of autumn, except for the misted mornings and the sudden chill each evening. But the sun was losing its strength, and though the midday heat still blazed, by early evening the light flopped lazy over the floor.
The villages along our route were enclosed by metal fences. Their houses were tidy, their gardens tidy, with pristine lawns of electric green and flowerbeds shining and clean. Otherwise the streets were empty, with the suffocated atmosphere of a new-built suburb. One or two villages contained spare rooms where trail hikers could spend the night: a hall with wooden floors and foam mats, or a classroom with tiny chairs and knee-high tables, the walls decorated in the twenty-two consonants of the Hebrew alphabet and an illustrated map labelling the fifty states of America.
On Wednesday afternoon we came to a hilltop village called Kibbutz Bar’am. The trail stop was an apartment smarter than anywhere else we had stayed, containing two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room and a kitchen. Handwritten rules were stuck to the walls, and the corridors smelt of paint.
That evening we were celebrating Sukkot. ‘For the end of harvest,’ Eldad explained. ‘Also, in the time of the Temple, for making pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Also for the Exodus, when the Jews were in the desert. When we were lost.’
Soon after we arrived, Tal’s parents and two sisters showed up. They did not live in the village, but had driven here with a car full of food. Or’s father came too, bringing a bottle of sparkling wine and three boxes of baklava. We spent an hour cooking and cleaning, and then laid the table with plastic plates. Then we tucked into a spread of stuffed vegetables, stuffed dumplings, flatbread, sweetbread and cheesecake. A sense of celebration filled the room – not the aggressive hospitality I had been shown in Hammana, but something quieter and more sincere. I was neither an honoured guest nor an object of curiosity. Instead, I was a stranger welcomed at a feast.
Finally, the excited unease of Lebanon gave way to a submerged relief.
I sat next to Or’s father, a streamlined version of his son – mouth sharper, teeth larger, head shaved clean of hair. He told a long story about a friend who was captured during the 1973 war. It wasn’t clear where the story was going, until he said: ‘Two days ago I am listening to the radio when I hear his voice. All the radio shows are remembering the war – forty years anniversary – and he is describing the time he was a prisoner. He is telling how he was put in a room with no light, no space, no air. All alone. He is so afraid he begins to pray, and the more he prays, the more his fear goes away.’ Or’s father grinned, flashing each one of his thirty-two teeth. ‘Before the war, he says, I did not believe, but when I needed God, He was waiting for me.’
Midway through the meal Eldad recited a prayer. As he spoke, Tal held a napkin over his head, while Or repeated the words Amen, Amen. For much of the evening they had been laughing, but now their voices were solemn. The mood in the room grew sombre, as if our journey together were an act of commemoration or a show of solidarity.
Afterwards, Or’s father filled a Kiddush cup and passed it round the table. He talked about the fellowship of Jews and the hospitality of exiles. He said that living in Israel was a miracle, every day another miracle. Finally he wrote down a verse from Isaiah and urged me to learn it off by heart. The words were in Hebrew, so I could not guess their meaning, but later that night I looked up the line. It said: ‘They that wait on God shall renew their strength; they shall put forth new feathers like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not hunger.’
On Friday morning the three friends left me. That afternoon I reached the Sea of Galilee, a twenty-kilometre strip of water enclosed by low hills. Their southern slopes were bright with vegetation, their northern slopes khaki-coloured – a grainy texture like the husk of an older landscape. Banana plantations lined the western shore, each drooping leaf cobwebbed with yellow cloth. But the water looked shallow and silty – no place for miracles.
On Saturday morning I visited the lake’s pilgrim shrines. My first stop was the Church of the Primacy of St Peter, which was built from black basalt and white mortar and set above a pebble beach. A dozen Chinese pilgrims knelt near the water, collecting tidewashed pebbles in ziplock bags.
A man wearing robes stood next to the church, holding a microphone in one hand and a speaker in the other. I could not tell if he was a tour guide or a priest. The man addressed the pilgrims in English, his voice thin and pleading. He explained that this was the spot where Christ appeared to the disciples after his death, filling their nets with 153 fish. ‘The church is an antique,’ he said. ‘From the Franciscan period. But the most important church is the one on the inside.’
He went on: ‘Many of the churches in Israel are new because the old ones have fallen down in earthquakes or been destroyed by fighting. Buildings fall down when the earth shakes, but the church in your soul can never die.’
Finally he said: ‘Walk along the shore. Have a moment of self-meditation. Imagine Jesus standing beside you. Imagine him stepping onto the water. Do you have the courage to follow?’
I bumped into the pilgrims again at the Church of the Multiplication (‘You may not be rich, but the love of Jesus can feed five thousand people.’) And again at the Capernaum archaeological park, in a glass-bottomed church over the exposed foundations of the House of Peter. (‘Jesus tells the disciples to leave their lives behind. Could you give up your home? Could you say goodbye to your family?’) As the day wore on, the sun glared and the pilgrims’ expressions blanked.
In the afternoon I climbed onto a hill set back from the lak
eshore. The track ascended through fields of clodded earth and bony groves of olive. My rucksack’s metal frame was bent and it weighed unsteady on my shoulders, meaning that I staggered with every step.
A religious complex occupied the hilltop, centring on a Neo-Byzantine extravaganza called the Church of the Beatitudes. More walls of black basalt, with a dome of dark copper and slender pillars skirting the sides. Pristine buildings surrounded the church, and eight plaques were buried in the grass, engraved with verses from the famous sermon: blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers etc. But the only people I saw were the tour groups patrolling the lawn.
My eyes were tired from too much sun, so I crossed the lawn and sat beneath a palm tree. Moments later I noticed the same group of Chinese pilgrims gathering gravel from the paths, and soon I heard a familiar voice: ‘Are you pure in heart? Are you poor in spirit? Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Well, friend, yours is the kingdom of heaven.’
On Sunday morning I reached Yardenit, a narrow passage of water where the River Jordan flowed from the Sea of Galilee. Almost all the archaeological evidence suggests that Christ was baptized a hundred kilometres south of here, on the eastern side of the river, but when visitors arrive at the site they see eighty-five stone slates repeating the lines from Mark’s Gospel in eighty-five different languages: a voice from heaven . . . the spirit descending . . . Thou art my beloved son.
Eucalyptus trees floundered on the far bank, laying green and grey shadows like camouflage over the water. On the near bank 111 men from the Indonesian Church of Jesus were queuing to be baptized. Their voices were hushed, their smiles squashed, and they seemed insane with happiness.
A priest stood in the river, dunking pilgrims in rapid succession. Every time someone plunged beneath the water, silver ripples stirred the surface. Then the pilgrims splashed up again, their faces shining, their clothes collapsed.