Travel131
The cab driver Abu Ali drove us to Tyre (Tyr, Sur, Sour) yesterday, from whose beaches you can see Israel (according to the preamble of the guy on the beach trying to sell me fake artifacts after pointing towards Egypt across the sea and at Palestine as the middle of the visible land mass jutting distantly to the left), and we saw more archeology (Tyre dates back to 2750BC), wound our way through clean narrow streets or alleyways where open doors gave view into small tidy homes, briefly through a souk (outdoor yet often covered market) which for me exuded more exotic visual flavor than anything previously seen on this trip. When at the marina it began raining we were called over to the small corner shop/living room of a Christian fisherman and told to sit down. I saw bottles of whisky on his shelf and ordered a neat Dewars (back in Beirut in the hotel room we are drinking at the end of each day duty free Johnnie Walker Green Label). Bernadette ordered an espresso but the fisherman's espresso machine, such as it was, did not cooperate so she had a tea. The fisherman laid out olives and some packaged pita bread on the table. When it was time to go he charged us 10,000LBP (about $6.50) but I did not have a 10,000 note so he took my 20,000 note and offered no change. I was ok with it. The olives were very good.
Abu Ali was waiting for us in his red 75 Mercedes near the Al-Mina site. Today we are in a mid 70s Chevrolet Caprice Classic, driver's name unknown, veering around and in between cars on the mountain road 40 minutes east of Beirut, snow coming down, visibility a liitle better than zero. We just made a pit stop at a roadside store. The driver bought us espressos and introduced us to a money changer. We traded forty American into Syrian Pounds just to have some get started money.
We are headed into Damascus. The driver is making his fourth stop. At a bakery this time. We just stay in the car. The driver comes back and gives to Bernadette a handful of baked crunchy bread nuggets with sesame seeds and a hint of cinnamon sugar. Now he is smoking, the window barely cracked. There is a lot of smoking in Lebanon.
In Beirut you need not look for cabs because they look for you. As obvious as we are as tourists we get honked at a lot, just a short beep, not really too obnoxious. And at corners the drivers solicit you but also not in annoying fashion. Unlike the brazen touting in Turkey, especially at Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, where the hey look at my rugs, what I'm selling etc. can seem until calluses form hurtful and punishing.
But the Tyre day we had a plan which was to catch a cab to the Cola transport hub and then a bus to Tyre for maybe thirty bucks round trip. So we headed right out the hotel door and to the first guy waiting at the corner hailing us for his cab we said yes and got in. Our hotel had told us maybe 120 round trip by private taxi so when Abu Ali hearing of our bus plan quoted us 80 and said--good deal, good deal, we knew he wasn't just whistling something a Muslim might whistle. So that is how he became our driver and somewhat tour guide.
We did not ask him to take us to the Al-Bass archaeological site, he just took us there, and then to the Al-Mina, and then he parked and waited while we toured the old part of town for a long hour and then to a fish house across the street from the Sea Castle (Crusaders) in Sidon on the way back to Beirut, about a six hour commitment to us altogether.
We had Al-Bass mostly to ourselves. It is a quite expansive site. It is bordered on one side by a Palestinian refugee camp. At some point not ten minutes in to roaming around these three young boys, Palestinian, about ten to twelve years old sneak up on us all frieidly like so I just sort of motioned at my camera and they jumped right to posing. They asked Bernadette her name and she told them and the ask her my name and she told them, so I became Jeem, their English most rudimentary yet far exceeding our Arabic. In all there were maybe ten boys and I took a few shots of them climbing on the ruins ( or maybe I pointed to the ruins I wanted them to climb on until they quickly took to my suggestions. The boys were under the tutelage of some Muslim scholars, one of whom spoke English and let us know they were doing the Lord Allahs work by trying to teach the boys the lessons of the Koran. The boys were just having fun which I am sure Allah does not object to. We got back to Abu Ali without taking a proper look at the world class hippodrome but got a gander of it on the distance as the Palestinian boys raced off towards it.
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