BEIRUT
The children and I were very sad to leave John in Jeddah, and I was a bit apprehensive about setting off again without him for an unknown destination. We were met at Beirut Airport by the accountant and taken to La Residence Hotel. We had been allocated a suite of three rooms with a little kitchenette and bathroom. The Bank was to pay for my accommodation and I had to provide my own food. There was a restaurant on the top floor but the menu was not suitable for the children and was rather more than I could afford, so I cooked on the electric ring in the kitchenette and sometimes made up a picnic lunch for us all.
There were no Bank wives in Beirut at that time, apart from the Manager’s wife, and she left soon after we arrived. The Bank bachelors were very helpful while I got myself organised. I was made a member of the St George’s Club, which was a very short walk from the hotel. I could take the children there to swim and have lunch for a reasonable price. We developed a routine of making our own breakfast at the hotel, shopping or walking and exploring in the morning, then on to the club for lunch. Back to the hotel for a rest in the afternoon, and then we returned to the club for tea and a swim until the children’s supper and bedtime.
Most evenings the Bank bachelors would take turns to come and babysit for me while I either went to the club for dinner or was invited out to a new-found friend’s house. People were very kind to me and made a great effort to see that I was not too lonely and did not miss John too much. Even so, I must say I looked forward to his arrival.
The American Navy was paying a courtesy visit to the Lebanon, showing the American flag. One afternoon an American sailor made friends with the children while they were swimming at the Club. We started chatting and he told me that he had two children the same ages as my two, and that he missed them very much. He enjoyed playing with Patricia and Christopher and was impressed by how well they could swim and dive. He invited me to dinner on board his ship, the aircraft carrier US Forrestal, that evening at 6.30 pm. I explained that I was living in a hotel and had to put the children to bed, and would not be able to get a baby sitter so early at such short notice. He replied that he meant that the children should come too and said a Jeep would come to collect us at shortly after 6 pm. Christopher was not yet two and a half years old and Patricia about four, so I was not sure how they would cope.
At 6 pm sharp a Jeep drew up at the hotel entrance - with two motorbike outriders! We climbed in with great excitement, and off we went. The aircraft carrier towered above us from the dock as the Jeep bumped up a ramp and into an opening in the side of the ship. The children were lifted out of the jeep and I stepped out as elegantly as I could.
We were led into the middle of a great platform which rose steadily until we were level with the flight deck, where our friend awaited us. Then we were piped aboard, feeling very important. It was then that I learned that our sailor was none other than “Jimmy the One”, second in command of the Forrestal. We were to have dinner at the Captain’s table in the wardroom!
I was horrified, as I did not think that the children were really up to a formal dinner like this. I was quite wrong. They sat on either side of me and a sailor stood behind each child, helped them cut their food and even spooned some into them. I must say the children made me proud as they behaved so beautifully.
The meal over, they were taken away and entertained for about an hour, while I finished my coffee and chatted to the officers. Many of them were family men and I think genuinely enjoyed having the children there. I felt very self-conscious that I was the only woman present, but they were excellent hosts and it was a very pleasant evening. The children were brought back babbling incoherently about planes and things they had seen. We were driven back to the hotel in our Jeep, with outriders as before. The children were happy and had enjoyed themselves, although they were tired and ready for bed.
We got up early the next morning and ran down to the beach to wave to the ship as it sailed away. It is sad that today neither Patricia nor Christopher remember anything about their dinner at the Captain’s table on board what was then the largest aircraft carrier in the world. If they could remember they might be able to tell me how the US Navy managed to supply Christopher with a disposable nappy! They were a very rare commodity in those days and I would have given a great deal to have discovered where they had found it.
Two weeks had gone by and the fighting over the Suez Canal continued. I met several of the news correspondents at the bar in the Club and heard how things were going. There was one old reprobate who spent his time gossiping at the bar and sending the tales home to his paper before returning to his room, next to mine, at La Résidence, where I could hear him snoring loudly through the wall. I’m afraid he did not impress me much as a purveyor of first-hand news, though his capacity for gin and tonic was phenomenal. The old reprobate really ought to have retired, as he rarely left his bar stool, and that was to go to bed and not to gather news.
There was, however, a young Times reporter who worked really hard and seemed to wangle himself into and out of all manner of scrapes. He had pale blue eyes, I remember, and told us about his exploits with an intensity of excitement which really had a ring of truth.
One morning, as I was sitting in the shade at the Club watching the children dive off the raft, Christopher came to tell me he was going to the loo. After some time he had still not returned, so I went to see what he was up to. I could not find him anywhere and no one had seen him. I was getting frantic. Then I looked down at the sea – to see him lying motionless on the rocks some fifteen feet below the sundeck area, with the waves washing over him.
I screamed for help. A young man scrambled down to Christopher and passed him up to another man who was reaching down. There was blood pouring from his head and he was unconscious. I grabbed a towel, wrapped it round him and ran out to the street, where I hailed a taxi and was driven at speed to the hospital.
The Beirut Hospital was a teaching hospital and the doctors and nurses were mostly American trained so, at least, I had no language difficulty. Christopher was whisked away from me and taken to the X-ray and casualty departments. I remember that I was very cold in the air-conditioned hospital, I had not thought to dress before I ran out, so I was wearing only a rather damp bathing suit. Eventually I was given back the blood-soaked towel I had wrapped round Christopher. I put it round my shoulders in an attempt to warm up.
After what seemed a long wait, a doctor came and told me that Christopher had a cut on his head and they had stitched it up, but he had not cracked his skull. However he did have concussion, so they wanted to keep him in for a while. I was taken to see him and he looked very small lying in the white bed with his head swathed in a huge bandage. He was very dopey and did not seem to care if I was there or not. He was being well cared for, so I decided to take the opportunity to go back to the Club, to see what had happened to Patricia and get myself dressed. I felt a bit conspicuous standing on the pavement dressed in my bathing costume and no shoes, clutching a bloodstained towel. I also realised I had no money to pay for a taxi, and then I remembered that I had not paid for the taxi that had brought us to the hospital either!
I arrived back at the Club to find Patricia sitting with a friend having lunch. I told the Club manager that I would have to return to the hospital as I ought to be there when Christopher woke up.
Everybody was very kind to us. It was suggested that, as I spent so much time at the Club anyway, I might as well take over two of the rooms available for visitors passing through, as this would be easier for me to have help in keeping an eye on the children. I was allowed to bring Christopher home that evening, though I had to keep him in bed for the next few days. With the help of kind friends we managed to keep Patricia amused and Christopher quiet until he was back to normal. Certainly it was easier to manage with extra hands and eyes about, though I did miss my little kitchenette at the hotel.
Two weeks later John arrived in Beirut, and we were very glad to see him. The day after he arrived, we moved into a little villa in the Patrakia district. It was a pretty little house built into the hill, with three bedrooms and a living room with a dining area at the back with a vaulted ceiling. There was a tiled patio, large enough for the children to ride their tricycles, with tubs and troughs for flowers round the edge. We engaged a maid called Marie, who lived in a room off the kitchen. The Patrakia was a quiet residential area with a Catholic bishop living on one side of us and, we discovered at a later date, a rather high-class brothel on the other.
The Lebanon is a beautiful country with mountains stretching inland and the wonderful blue Mediterranean Sea lapping on the beaches. Beirut was a modern city with sophisticated shops displaying a variety of goods from all over the world. There were markets which sold fresh fruit and vegetables, grown in the gardens in the mountains and in the Bekaa valley to the east. There were supermarkets and department stores cheek by jowl with boutiques and small emporia beside tailors and hairdressers, a shoe shop next door to a jeweller, bookshops beside cafes, and furniture stores alongside electricians. In fact it was a delicious contrast to all the places I had lived in to date in the Middle East.
The community was very cosmopolitan, speaking French, English and Arabic. As the Lebanon had been under French mandate, like Syria, the French influence was very evident in the buildings, with their pretty little wrought iron verandas, and in their inadequate plumbing arrangements. Most educated people spoke French and it was commonly spoken in the market, though Arabic was the native tongue. English was widely spoken too, as there were a great number of Americans working on various projects with the United Nations who had offices and ran refugee camps for Palestinians in the mountains. There was also a large rest and recreation centre where UN men and women came to recover and prepare for their next period of duty, mainly in Israel.
The political climate was very confusing all the time we were in the Lebanon. The various religious factions were feuding continuously. If a Lebanese was asked what he was, he would not reply that he was a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker. He would say that he was a Christian Maronite, Druse, Copt or Muslim Shiite, etc.
Not long after we arrived in the Lebanon, parliamentary elections were held. The various religious and political factions fiercely contested these. In the end Camille Shamoun, a Christian, was elected President, while the Muslim Sammi Solh was elected Prime Minister.
There were a great many Palestinian refugees in camps dotted about the country, where they lived without work or anything to do, and so had plenty of time to fume about their situation and foment trouble for all and sundry. They had been displaced when the state of Israel was formed and so had become homeless refugees, causing embarrassment to the hard-working trading Lebanese, who really did not want to have their cosy lives disturbed. There were more refugee camps in Syria and Egypt and they did not want to settle them either, as they were useful as a reason to stir up trouble for Israel. The situation was difficult enough because so many had to live as refugees in camps, though the United Nations was doing its utmost to cope with an insoluble problem. All this, added to the anti-British feelings provoked by the pro Egyptian Gamel Abdul Nasser fanatics, and the Suez Canal crisis, made Beirut a difficult place in which to live at times.
Bombs began exploded in various embassies and offices all over the Middle East, and Beirut became inundated with European refugees fleeing from Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Most of the British people went on to the UK, but unmarried Bank personnel were billeted on those of us left in Beirut, as it was considered safe enough on the whole. The Rolls Royce agent in Damascus passed through on his way to the UK and left his dog Cindy, a corgi cross, with us.
We had two men from the Bank in Jordan staying with us. Things became a little difficult when we were unable to obtain replacement butane gas bottles for the cooking stove. I found a primus stove and, as I already had a pressure cooker, I managed to cope. It was summer, so hot food was not essential but thinking up a varied menu was a problem. One very hot sunny day I had an idea. I made a meringue mixture and placed small portions on a chopping board, a tumbler over each, with a stone under the rim of each glass to let the air out. The meringues dried beautifully in the sun and we had a very exotic variation to the menu. I called them “cloched meringues”.
As there were so many people passing through Beirut, health control became a problem. An edict was issued that everyone must carry a certificate to say that they had been vaccinated against smallpox, cholera and typhoid. There were checkpoints all over town and if you were unable to present a certificate when stopped you were inoculated there and then.
Some people looked like boy scouts with rows of plasters up their arms where they had been re-vaccinated several times. I was always careful to see that we carried our papers at all times.
Guards were put on the entrances to all offices and public buildings and all bags were searched for anything suspicious. I remember being angry with the guard on the Bank door one morning. He allowed me to pass without turning out my shopping. I insisted that he inspect my onions and that he was to let no one into the Bank, whether he knew them or not, without searching them. After all, my husband was in that office and no risks were to be taken.
Unfortunately, for the first few months after we moved into our little house in the Patrakia one or other of us was always ill. Patricia had rheumatic fever, Christopher had bouts of bronchitis and we all had influenza, including the maid. Christopher had cyclical vomiting and had to be taken to hospital to be intravenously fed, as he had become dehydrated. At the same time the maid was ill and Patricia was recovering from another bout of illness. This was very difficult to understand as we had survived the problems of Saudi Arabia and had been reasonably healthy. Our diet was so much better in Beirut that it was difficult to understand why we should all be so unhealthy. The climate was not very hot in the Lebanon, so we did not require air conditioning, but it was very humid, and everything was damp. I became convinced that our house was damp as well as humid.
After a certain amount of argument we managed to persuade the Manager that indeed we did have a problem and he allowed me to look for other accommodation. I looked at over 50 apartments and eventually found a ground floor flat in an old building, with a small garden, in the El Hamrah district, quite near the University. We moved, and became well again.
When the floor was pulled up in the little villa it was discovered that the floor tiles had been laid straight on to the ground and there was no damp course. One could squeeze water out of the sand in which the tiles were bedded. What had been taken for Beirut’s humidity was in fact rising damp.
Our new flat was a great success. The children enjoyed the garden, as they had plenty of room to play. We made a sand pit and there was a small lawn where they could pitch their tent. Cindy enjoyed the freedom too. The main snag was the traffic, which ran on two sides of us, but we quickly got used to that.
The building was an old one and the rooms were large with high ceilings. The floors were cool tiles and there was a very efficient marble fireplace in which to burn logs in winter. The main bedrooms were double aspect and were fitted with fly netting to keep the mosquitoes out. There were security bars on the windows too, so we were not afraid to keep our windows open at night. We had the added security of having the Bank’s Ras Beirut sub office immediately opposite us, so a night watchman could keep an eye on us at night while guarding the Bank.
There were many interesting places to visit in Lebanon, so we found ourselves a car, a very ancient BMW which had a long bonnet with a sort of “rabbit hutch” on the back. It was really a two-seater, but there was a bench seat in the back, which was fine for the children, and a fairly capacious boot, quite capable of holding tricycles and picnic baskets as well as flippers and masks etc. for outings.
Driving was quite terrifying and I never quite summoned up the courage to drive in Beirut. I found being a passenger quite frightening enough. I continued to travel about town by service taxi, as this was a very convenient way to get around. These were taxis which ran along set routes and set off to and from the centre of town whenever they had four passengers. One could stop them wherever one liked to get on or off, and the price was a set fee of LL1 per seat, however far one wanted to travel so long as it was on the set route.
Shopping was much easier from our new flat as a big supermarket, Spinneys, was a two-minute walk away. The Hamra, the Oxford Street of Beirut, was the next street along to ours and ran parallel to it. The English-speaking school Patricia was to attend when she was five was a short walk away.
Several children we knew went to the German kindergarten on the sea front and seemed to enjoy being there, so we enrolled Patricia for a term to see how she settled down. She already spoke some French and Arabic as well as English and quickly learned to make herself understood in German too. She was collected by bus each morning at 8.30 and returned at midday in time for lunch. This enabled the children to have a rest after their lunch and be ready to do whatever was planned for the afternoon after John and I had eaten. The next term we let Christopher join Patricia. We were very amused one day, after John and I had been conversing in rapid French so that the children should not understand, when Patricia said something in German to Christopher, which we did not understand, and Christopher replied, also in German, with a conspiratorial glance in our direction.
At weekends and on holidays we loved to drive out of town and up into the hills to explore. The roads were good and wide but often steep. Our elderly car would sometimes boil, so we had to park by the roadside and open the bonnet to let the engine cool down. On these occasions we scrambled over the rocks and found wild cyclamen growing in the most inaccessible places and anemones flourishing in the poorest of soil. Somehow things grew much larger and taller in the Lebanon than anywhere else. Cabbages were like footballs, carrots were like cucumbers and the insects were huge too. The umbrella pine trees were a feature of the Lebanon, with very tall trunks reaching starkly into the sky, and their greenery clustered right at the top. The famous cedars grew high in the mountains above the snow line, where one could ski in winter. It was said that it was possible to ski in the morning and swim in the sea in the afternoon. Well I suppose it was true, if one got up early, drove for four hours up to the cedars, skied, and drove down again for the four hour return trip to the sea. Personally, we did not try.
One of our favourite trips was a visit to the ruins of the Roman Temples at Baalbek over the mountains in the Bekaa valley. The six remaining pillars of the Roman Temple of Jupiter, some 65 feet high, were especially impressive, as was the staircase, hewn from a huge single block of stone. We went there one night to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Merchant of Venice, with Robert Helpmann as Shylock. The ancient Roman stage or sacrificial altar was uneven, and the actors had to move with care. The eerie shadows thrown by the flickering torches fixed round the walls gave the action an aura of authenticity. Somehow the idea of Romans in their togas mingling with the audience seemed quite possible. It was wonderful to see this temple as it was meant to be seen, with the carved acanthus leaves decorating the capitals and the frieze lit from below, as originally intended. As there was no roof on the temple, except over the colonnade round the outside of the walls, in daylight the carvings were lit from above and therefore were not seen at their best.
The 65-foot-high pillars of the Temple of Jupiter looked as if they were made of gold lying on a bed of black velvet, floodlit against the night sky, presiding over the Temple of Bacchus in which the production was taking place.
On the way into the village, we passed a quarry where a huge 2,000-ton hand-hewn block of stone still lies, too heavy even for the resourceful Romans to move. It is said to be the largest hewn block in the world.
A short walk away stands the small, even dainty, temple of Venus, circular in shape with a double row of columns. French archaeologists had tastefully restored it. If only the stones could talk; they would be able to tell us about the various people who had built temples, mosques and churches on the site since about 138 AD, all to be destroyed by major earthquakes in 1664 and 1750.
Patricia and Christopher loved to play Lone Ranger and Tonto (characters in a cowboy film that was particularly in favour at that time), while scrambling over the stones. They were thrilled when a camel driver allowed them to ride on one of his camels.
Another favourite haunt was Nahr Kelb, where little boats took us about half a mile along an underground river into the magnificent caves of Jaheeta, to see the stalactites dripping from the roof of the caves deep under the mountain. They were much more impressive and the underground river was far longer than those to be seen at the Cheddar Gorge in England. It was wonderful to be in the caves on a hot day, as they were so cool that one really required a cardigan.
Round the shoulder of the mountain at the mouth of the Nahr Kelb was an ancient road with carvings on the rocks commemorating the passing of armies long ago. Among them was Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC,) the Chaldean King of Babylon mentioned in the Bible. There were several Assyrian memorials in poor condition, including those of Marcus Aurelias Caracalla (211-217 AD), and more modern commemorative plaques, including one about the British Liberation of the Lebanon and Syria in 1941, and the evacuation of all foreign troops in 1946. Opposite the road, high on the top of a peak, stood a huge, modern statue of Christ with His arms raised high, reaching to the heavens above.
Along the coast ran an autobahn from Nahr Kelb to Byblos, the next town on the coast. It was along this autobahn that we were once stopped for driving too slowly! You were limited to between 50 and 70 mph. Unfortunately our old car would not go fast enough, so we were requested to leave. It was a little ridiculous, as, apart from the police car there were no other cars to be seen in either direction. We felt humiliated, however.
Byblos is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited towns in the world, thought by many to be the oldest city. It was already a great commercial and religious centre in 400 BC and has played its part in Middle Eastern history ever since. The ruins of a small Roman theatre, some pillars of which still stand, are situated on the edge of the coast. A Crusader castle stood beside a Phoenician port, the remains of which stretch out into the sea. Neolithic pot burial grounds and several “god boxes,” tall, thin obelisks, can be seen from the walls of the castle. It was at Byblos that we learned how the great stone sarcophagi were lowered into their graves. A deep hole, a bit larger than the sarcophagus, was excavated and then filled with sand. The sarcophagus was then dragged on top and all the sand was removed from around it, until the right depth was reached.
I was told that it was along this beach that Jonah escaped from the whale. We did not believe that whales were found in the Mediterranean, until a dead one was washed up on the beach one day near Beirut. We went down to see it so that I could legitimately use my very first Arabic word – “huout”. It was a very smelly “huout” too.
After Byblos, the dual carriage way led on to Tripoli, the second largest town in the Lebanon.