Lebanon's key tourist attractions survived the recent Israeli onlaught relatively unscathed - but the country's tourism industry faces ruin if the foreign visitors don't return soon, writes Erlend Clouston
Bubbling under ... tour guide Ziad Abu
Jawdeh smokes a water pipe as he waits
for tourists to return to LebanonTravellers grinding east over the mountains from Beirut to Lebanon's gargantuan Ba'albek Roman temple complex have the opportunity to contemplate more poignant ruins along the way.
One such example is the $65m, 70 metre-high, Mdeirej viaduct which links the Lebanese capital with the Bekka Valley and Damascus. It had half its southern carriageway neatly peeled off by Israeli bombers during the recent 34-day conflict that cost Lebanon 106 other bridges, 1,200 civilian lives, and 35,000 homes.
Miraculously, however, the country's principal tourist attractions all emerged unscathed from what laconic local operators refer to as "our recent challenge". A UNESCO audit of the five World Heritage sites in Lebanon detected no serious damage - and my own excursions in the second week of October to Ba'albek and the Phoencian port of Byblos confirmed the good reports. Meanwhile, a trip to BO18, the sunken techno-Gothic jewel of Beirut's night-life, confirmed that it is disconcertingly possible to have a good time in a former combat zone while the ink is still drying on the ceasefire document - even in an establishment whose opening roof bears a striking resemblance to that of a missile silo.
At the Movenpick, a sort of coastal-defence-system-cum-Babylonian-pleasure-palace draped over the Beirut cornice, staff took pride in the fact that their manager was the only five-star hotelier not to flee the country. But even here the only craters visible were tiled and filled with agreeably warm water.
What works for an individual wandering on a "fingers-crossed" basis does not work for nervous governments. Lebanon's tourist industry, already worth 9% of GDP and contemplating a record year, has suddenly found itself on the world's travel blacklists. This is particularly gut-wrenching for TLB Destinations, a Beirut-based travel company which, on January 1 this year, helped youth tourism specialist Cyclamen set up a scheme for training the unemployed to work as tour leaders. The second batch of 20 graduates had barely picked up their certificates when the sirens began to wail.
TLB was set up a decade ago by Dani Nader, a 44-year-old French fine arts scholar with the slight frame and discreet tones of a Buddhist monk. What is probably one of Beirut's only paper recycling tubs sits in the corner of his city office. Intermittently he and his colleagues are plunged into darkness as the mains electricity dies. The publicity surrounding the war has cost him 80% of his business and he acknowledges that it could take years for Lebanon's reputation to fully recover. The despair felt by his former trainees just adds another dimension to the disaster.
"It is very sad," he sighs. "They come in here once or twice a week for a chat. They made many friends. Some had done university studies and were looking for a job for years. Their families have need of money."
It is a similar story all over the country, with hundreds of experts in everything from Crusader architecture to four-wheel-drive truck driving or Lebanese hospitality (always refuse the first offer, always accept the second) are facing financial crisis.
The precariousness of being a tour guide is illustrated by the case of Ziad Abu Jawdeh. An affable, shaven-headed 36-year-old computer science graduate who has guided for TLB since 1998, Ziad shares a tiny two-roomed Beirut flat with his invalid mother. Even in the good times - he led six mainly British groups in the spring and early summer - he earned an average of just $500 a month. Now he is reliant for survival on Dani's hard-pressed philanthropy. "If I really need something, TLB will give it to me," he says. "It is like a family. But they can't give much as Dani has nothing coming in."
Forward-planning adventurers who want their money to make a difference should note that TLB and Cyclamen's imaginative programmes consciously set out to sustain Lebanon's fragile rural communities. Craftsmen are paid regardless of whether purchases are made, and meals are taken with local families. The one-day Agro-Tourism tour will involve you in "fruit-picking, ploughing or irrigation," depending on the season.
For the record, incidentally, the worst thing that happened during my four-day trip - which included a visit to Hizbollah's headquarters - was the snapping of the BO18 band's bass drum pedal.
