Lures of Little Lebanon Enticing, Powerful. Her stay in Lebanon lasted longer than expected. We were window shopping in Beirut, Lebanon, and stopped to admire the large dahlias, asters and other flowers at a sidewalk shop. The owner, seeing our interest, chose two long-stemmed roses, and, with a smile, handed them to us.
I stopped and looked back. The shopkeeper of a candy store where I sometimes bought a few things was leaning over the counter. With a smile he gave me a few freshly carameled nuts.
These are two of the pleasant things that happened during my stay in Lebanon. A friend and I had allotted five days on our itinerary for the little country, but the mountains, the flowers, the blue of the Mediterranean Sea, the gracious people, the interesting streets and the gay music made us stay longer. On a spring day with the sun shining we postponed our plane reservations for the first time. After three postponements, we canceled our reservations all together. In the end we found jobs, sublet an apartment and lived in Lebanon for five months.
Lebanon, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, is at the crossroads between East and West and is a blend of the twoβFrench and Arabic are mixed easily in conversations, the minarets and mosques and the steeples of churches add height to the skyline, and European styles mix with traditional dress in the streets. Though the country is small only miles long by 30 miles wide , there is much to see. There are the stately cedars of Lebanon, on the slopes of Dahr el-Kadib, about 75 miles from Beirut.
Contemporaries of these trees were used by Solomon to build his temple and by the pharaohs to build their boats. Fifty-five miles east of Beirut on a road that leads over the mountains is Baalbek. The Roman ruins there are the largest in the world and the six remaining columns of the Temple of Jupiter are among the most beautiful. Byblos, 25 miles up the coastline from Beirut, is said to be the oldest continually inhabited seaport. Now a little town known as Gebal it was once the seat of Phoenician civilization.
