Baakoura: A Lebanese Story

The Rural Improvement Society invited me to deliver a lecture at its annual festival, and I found myself before an audience of students, among them a number of young men working for the improvement of the Lebanese village, and no small number of villagers who had come down from the mountains especially to attend the celebration. After an opening that met with a certain success, there came to my mind a jest I had once heard from a wag who wished to exaggerate the fine climate of his town and the long lives of its people: he said it had never known a single death, so that they were obliged to put to death an old man far gone in years in order to found a cemetery. This pleasantry of mine found favor with everyone except the back corner of the hall, where I noticed a suspicious commotion shot through with something nearer to mockery than to laughter.

I finished my speech before its time, driven by an insistent desire to discover the cause of that uproar, and hurried toward its source, cutting my way through the crush of the departing crowd — and there I stood, face to face with a young man of strange appearance, who rushed toward me, his face marked with reproach and pain, saying, “And you too mock me! What is the matter with all of you, that you will not believe?” He was about to say something more, and I was about to clear myself of what he supposed of me, assuring him that I had no knowledge of what he meant. But there was no room for that, for a band of the students overtook us; one whispered in my ear, “This is a madman escaped from the Asfouriyeh,” and another whispered, “We have been in a long argument with him — he refuses to understand,” and another said, “He claims to come from a village that does not exist in Lebanon!” And the more each of them set me against him, the more curious I grew to know the truth of this man; so I took him by the hand to a quiet corner of the club, and we sat through the second watch of the night, I plying him with coffee and he exchanging talk with me.

The first thing that astonished me, before I heard this young man's story, was his ancient dress, the like of which has not been seen for centuries — a black felt cap of exceeding height, from beneath which black hair hung loose to just above the shoulders; a short cloak of goat's hair; and blue trousers of heavy weave, with a kaftan brocaded in threads of colored wool. Then I was astonished by the man's Lebanese mountain accent, mingled with a jargon I could not tell whether it was Syriac or Aramaic, for all my slight acquaintance with those tongues. I fell to contemplating the appearance of this strange person, and in his face, brimming with health and vigor, there showed the marks of nobility and daring. I judged his age at between twenty and twenty-five, with all the strength and impetuosity of that age. The note of complaint never left his voice as he repeated what he had said to me before: “What is the matter with you, that you will not believe? I am from the village of Baakoura, in the district of Kesrouan. I am from the very heart of Lebanon. I risked my life in coming to you to seek reform for my town. What is the matter with you, that you will not understand?”

I confessed to him that I had never heard that name before, but that I was ready to offer him every help within my power — what was the reform he sought?

He said: “The first thing I ask of you is to approach the government, or the societies concerned, to send a mission to study the conditions of Baakoura, even against the will of its people. I myself have failed in my endeavor, and found no one who did not meet my appeal with a shrug of the shoulders and words of pity and disdain... We are all but perishing, good people! Our town is the town of the living dead — the town of old men who do not die; and that is what made your young men mock my words and think me touched. We have nothing but a fine climate and long life. No stranger enters our village, because of the ruggedness of the path and the hostility of Sheikh Nimrod, and none of us leaves it, for we have inherited a shrinking into ourselves until our isolation has become a law we do not transgress and would not exchange for anything else. Except me — I have risen against the will of Sheikh Nimrod.”

I asked him: “And who is this Sheikh Nimrod?”

He said: “He is Nimrod the Nestorian, the grandfather of our family's grandfather, absolute ruler in things religious and civil, who holds sway over our destinies, our wills, and our souls. If he knew that I had left my village to seek help, he would inflict on me the most hideous punishment. But I drank the spirit of liberty from the teaching of a monk called Father Arman al-Halabi. He taught me to read in secret, and had hidden in his hermitage a collection of books; when his doings were found out by the Sheikh, who tried to lay hands on him, he fled and his traces vanished. Of late I have grown used to breaking his law and going out to the villages, drawing from them a new life and catching the news of the world; and so something reached me of your works of building and development, which summoned me to attend this celebration. I want for my town liberty, learning, and some of the works that others of the sons of Lebanon enjoy. By Shamma's life, that is all I want.”

I asked him, “And who is this Shamma?” He sighed and returned no answer.

I thought to honor him with a glass of aged Ksara wine; he drank a mouthful and said, “This is water — it has no taste. Would that you could taste our wine: we do not count it aged unless it has lain a full generation in its jars.”

Then I asked him his name, and he said: “Your servant, Jrous.” I said: “You have my word, Jrous, that I will spend the whole of my tomorrow in your service. Can you stay here two or three days?” He said: “Yes. I am used to being away from my house for days, working in our distant folds and returning to the caves at nightfall. I could have fled to the wide world, had I not seen duty calling me to rescue the sons of my village, though I expose myself to destruction and to mockery.”

I said: “And I have a duty which I shall perform as far as ever I am able.”

And indeed the sun of the next day had not risen upon us before I was going about the city begging my friends' sympathy for the project, moving from one government office to another, appealing to this man and to that. Most of the day passed without avail, and I could not persuade anyone to accompany me to Baakoura, that lost hamlet; so I resolved to make the journey alone with my new friend.

The weather was clear, and the breath of spring stirred in me a longing for adventure; so I took my revolver and my stick, loaded my camera, pulled on a massive pair of boots, and boarded with Jrous a car that carried us to a spot in the high wilds of Kesrouan where the paved road comes to an end.

We began climbing the roughest paths God ever created, until we reached a mountain drowned in thick fog. Would that I had judged better and put off my journey another month, until the weather had settled; for we had not walked some two hours before the face of the sky darkened and a wild storm took us by surprise, forcing us to shelter in the lee of rocks and caves. Darkness overtook us while we were still astray in trackless wilds where a traveler would lose his way even by day. All the while my friend kept adding to my knowledge of his village's affairs — which only added to my perplexity, and doubts of the soundness of his mind would have crept into me but for the coherence of his ideas and their agreement with historical facts. From his talk I concluded that he belonged to a sect that had split from the Maronites over a dispute early in the thirteenth century; that it professes the Nestorian doctrine and claims descent from the stock of the original Mardaites; and that the schism led to its shutting itself up in its impregnable stronghold, until time wove over it the web of oblivion.

So we passed the greater part of the night, I beguiling myself with hopes that made me forget my folly in plunging into this peril without sufficient preparation, guided by nothing but my trust in this stranger whom I had known for no more than a day. We kept pressing on until we came to a towering wall of rock, which I thought the furthest point a human foot could tread; but Jrous led me to a cave behind a thicket of brushwood and brambles, as though showing me a secret known to no creature but himself. He said: “Do you think anyone ever thought of sounding the depths of this cave, beyond its pitch darkness? No — but... yes, I recall just one man who went in and never came out. As for you, you have nothing to fear so long as you follow me. Give me your hand.”

I gave him my hand and went in behind him, from one narrow turning to another still narrower, blaming him — who knew all this — for not having warned me to bring my electric torch; whereupon he swore by Shamma's life that never in his life had he heard of the existence of that kind of lamp. Then he fell to telling me the tale of a man who had once made his way into Baakoura and had gone before Sheikh Nimrod's seat, where he delivered what news of Lebanon he could; the Sheikh dismissed him, feigning to wish him a safe return to his homeland — but the poor man had not reached a certain appointed spot outside the village before the cut-throats waylaid him and flung him into the Valley of Perdition.

After a walk of minutes that seemed to me longer than the Day of Judgment, the light of dawn appeared to us, and the opening of the cave on the far side gave onto a new, unknown world. I breathed a deep sigh of relief, drawing in with it a moist breeze that opened my chest; I could not tell whether its wafts carried the scent of za'tar and broom, or some other fragrance holding the balm of life.

I stood dumbfounded, and my friend stood silent, so as not to spoil for me the effect of the first look.

In the middle of a basin no more than half a mile across, hemmed in by mountains on all four sides, stood a small hamlet of stone houses with flat earthen roofs like the old Lebanese houses, stretching eastward to a high slope in which numerous hermitages had been hollowed out. I asked my companion whether these hermitages were inhabited by monks, and he told me that most of the men turn to the life of asceticism in their early youth — one of the greatest causes of the scarcity of births, and perhaps part of the cause of the length of their lives. Yet the longevity of these men is as nothing beside what Sheikh Nimrod has attained, who, he told me, is directly linked to the ancestor Enoch. I smiled at Jrous's exaggeration, and asked whether he too intended the monastic life; he sighed, and confessed to me for the first time that he meant to marry a girl named Shamma, and fell to describing her beauty, her bent for liberty, and her agreement with him in thought and temper. On this occasion he disclosed to me something of a movement of liberation he was attempting to carry out with Shamma — “a sister of men,” as he described her to me again and again — and with a number of the young men who had come to prefer a short and honored life to a long life of humiliation and submission.

A kind of rapture from that sweet air and enchanting view took hold of me. Jrous turned to me, reading what was passing in my mind, and said: “Beautiful, yes — but it is a stagnant beauty. The beauty of a pool whose waters have stood still and gone foul, fit now only as a dwelling for frogs and a watering place for vermin. In this village everything wholesome and desirable is forbidden, and everything hidden is permitted. The Sheikh forbids learning and social life, fearing for his own position — he kills them outright; likewise he tries to prevent the mingling of the sexes, and drink, and smoking, but all of these are practiced in secret, for the forces of evil in man are stronger than the forces of good.”

Then he turned his face toward the towering wall through which we had entered, and said: “This stands between us and the world!”

I said, with disappointment in my voice: “This needs an effective government and powerful organizations to cut a road through it. Tomorrow — in the future, God willing.”

The young man felt the weakness that had come over me and said: “You have seen with your own eyes. I ask no more of you. Go back to Beirut, and write in the papers, and speak, and preach.”

What perplexity! Was it enough, after all my toil, that I had seen with my own eyes from afar, and carried away with me a blurred picture that looks like the likeness of any other village among the villages of Lebanon?

Jrous did not hide from me his fear that some harm might befall me, and that his own doings might be found out; he volunteered to accompany me out through the tunnel, but I proposed that he leave me to finish my adventure alone and go his own way as though he did not know me. I asked him, “What kind of weapons do you use?” He said: “We still use the tabanja, the ghaddara, and axes; but you have nothing to fear from these, for the Sheikh may well forbid their use against you, lest a stir be raised that would excite the curiosity of the people — and he knows, I think, that feeling is tense in his village. A single powder-shot might trouble the stillness of this valley, or begin a war between the soldiery and the people. I am sorry to say that at present the soldiery are the better prepared. And you have nothing to fear inside the village, so long as the Sheikh can get some profit out of you concerning the state of the world. The danger is on your way back: he does not want you to return to Beirut, so he will send his cut-throats to lie in wait for you in the narrow pass and fling you into the Valley of Perdition, where your traces will vanish from every eye and no room will be left for idle tales.” I looked up, and there we stood before an abysmal chasm which we should have to cross with the utmost care if we continued toward the hamlet. Jrous advised me to turn back before dark, so as not to be taken by treachery. When we had come out onto a firm level stretch of ground, I bade him farewell, wishing him deliverance, and he bade me farewell, wishing me success.

I walked on alone among the vineyards and the plantings of plum and apple, catching no trace of a living soul except cattle, sheep, and goats grazing on the flanks of the mountains, which were clothed in woods of oak and juniper. With every step I took I felt a heavy stillness pressing on my heart, and I took no comfort until I came upon an aged elder pruning his vine. The moment he saw me he stood up, dumbstruck, not knowing what to do or say. After some silent, nervous motions he began to laugh at me — a violent laugh, finding my dress outlandish — and then said: “And who are you?” I invented a story for him, which did not convince him; rather I saw him about to cry out, so I begged him to be quiet, and asked him to show me the way to the seat of Sheikh Nimrod. He returned to his guffawing, repeating: “You want the Patriarch — ha, ha, ha... you want the Patriarch!”

This confirmed to me what Jrous had said: that Sheikh Nimrod among them is the ruler, the patriarch, and the holder of all authority.

I offered him a cigarette; he glanced right and left, wary lest anyone see him, then took it and smoked it greedily. I asked him the reason for his uneasiness and he said: “I fear my father may see me and scold me harshly.” I said, astonished: “Your father?” He said: “Yes — would that you knew my father: he is jealous and harsh and knows no mercy. Come with me and I will present you to him.” He took me to a house whose entrances branched and wound, and as I passed through them it seemed that in every chink there was an eye watching me, though I heard not a single whisper — and there I stood before an elder whose beard spilled down to his waist, kneeling bolt upright in the corner, his eyes striking sparks. We did not stop with him, for my guide at once led me out, saying: “He is angry; his father has punished him for some obstinacy he showed.” I said: “His father! You mean your grandfather?” He said: “Yes, my grandfather. Come, let us visit him.” And so he carried me on from elder to elder, until I found myself within a spacious hall whose columns had been hewn in the living rock of a mighty crag, its entrance guarded by two elders bristling with rifles and axes. It seemed Sheikh Nimrod had already learned of my presence in his village, for I saw a chamberlain advance toward me and, without uttering a word, conduct me along a dark gallery to a kind of grotto with ornamented borders, its floor spread with carpets and rugs. At its head rose a throne, on which I made out an old man whose beard straggled over a face like the face of a mummy, in which no trace of life remained but two eyes that glimmered and two lips that moved with the word “Sit.”

I sat down before him, and he opened with a question, without turning toward me: “How did you manage to reach Baakoura?” I answered that I had lost my way and passed through a cave that brought me to his village, and that fortune had led me to appear before his presence. He paid no heed to my courtesy, but said: “That is the first lie. And where have you come from?” I was thunderstruck at this confrontation, and my limbs began to tremble as I said: “From Beirut.” He said: “Tell me about Lebanon. Have the Franks evacuated Tripoli?” I supposed him informed of the events of these days and began recounting the news, when suddenly he asked me: “And the Emir Jamal al-Din — does he still tyrannize over his subjects?” I inquired: “Which Jamal al-Din is this?” He said: “Jamal al-Din al-Tanukhi. You live in Beirut and do not know him? Then you are lying.” I felt my blood then run cold in my veins, and I was certain that I stood before a creature living in the remote past, with no tie to the present world. Every time I spoke to him of the country's affairs as I knew them, he spoke to me of them as he had known them generations ago. Yes, generations ago: he mentioned Crusader names to me, mixing his speech with foreign words. Then he asked me about al-Malik al-Zahir and Sultan al-Mansur; and I tried, by way of exchange, to tell him of the Emir Fakhr al-Din al-Ma'ni the Second, then of the great Emir Bashir al-Shihabi, then of the withdrawal of the shadow of the Ottoman State from the Arab lands, then of the independence of Lebanon. But he would wave my talk aside with a motion of his fingers, as though shaking dust from his robe, to give me to understand that he attached no weight to this information; rather I saw him return to his own reckoning, and I all but melted with dread when he said to me in a tone of menace: “It was we who crushed the Emir Baydara and scattered his men through the wild crags of Kesrouan — but...” and here his voice grew hot and his countenance darkened: “in that battle my father was slain at the hand of the accursed Shams al-Din Sunqur; and after all that, the Maronites betrayed me and conspired against me with the King of France of damnable memory. I shall never forget... and a day will come when I shall take the direst vengeance.” After a short silence it occurred to him to ask me: “And of what communion are you?” I was at a loss what to answer, and said, after brief hesitation: “I am of the Nestorians.” He said: “You have lied a third time. Tell me: who sent you to spy upon us?” Before I could attempt to clear myself of this charge, an elder in monk's habit appeared and offered me, on a silver tray, a glass of red wine. I did not know how to account for this hospitality after the monstrous accusations that had gone before it, and I began casting about in every direction: perhaps that redness held poison, as my punishment; or perhaps it was the cup of confession, as their custom has it, with which I should bid life farewell. But its fragrance spread, perfuming the air of that dreadful place, and stirred in me an appetite not to be restrained; I stretched out my hand and brought it near my mouth, and before it touched my lips

I remembered Jrous's words, and knew that I was drinking the oldest wine in the world. Without reckoning with anything, I drained it at one draught, saying to myself: “Blessed be the vine that bore you, and the jar that held you.”

I woke from a rapture — whether it lasted an hour or an age I cannot tell — in which I beheld rosy dreams that left no pleasure untasted; and I heard the Sheikh's voice saying to me, still seated like an idol: “You may choose to return to your country, or to stay with us and drink the wine of immortality... and we shall entertain you well, as you entertained our son Jrous.”

The words fell on me like a thunderbolt and broke my strength, for they cut off every path of denial. I said: “Yes, my lord... yes, I tried to do some part of my duty; but it is not possible for me to stay, for I have a family in Beirut, and... but where is my friend Jrous?” He signed to two elders standing at the door to take me to a place he named in a tongue I did not understand. Do not ask of my agitation when I missed my revolver, my camera, and my stick, and could not find them. The sun had leaned toward the horizon, and its rays struck into the grotto between the columns, and the figure of Sheikh Nimrod became clear to me, sending me off with a look in which there was no trace of feeling; rather I felt as though he were gazing down upon my crushed soul from the depths of the ages.

Ill luck would have it that my torment on that unhappy day should be made complete when I met, in the outer hall, two other elders leading Jrous under guard of axes, along the same road toward the Valley of Perdition. He turned to me from afar and said, “We are caught!” — yet he appeared calmer in mind than I, and steadier of nerve.

As for me, the world went black before my eyes, and remorse assailed me for an adventure that had brought upon me and my friend an evil we could well have spared ourselves; and I regretted having admitted to the Sheikh my kind entertainment of Jrous, not knowing that he too had fallen into the snare. We drew near the Valley of Perdition, and I looked behind me: there was Jrous with his two guards, all but overtaking me, and I noticed that he still walked with steps full of confidence and resolve. No sooner had we reached the chasm of danger than a shot rang out and felled the elder who guarded my right; he toppled, rolling into the depths, while the second guard, on my left, was busy leveling his weapon at a band of young men descending from among the rocks, led by a girl of striking beauty and mighty frame, who brandished a sword and brought it down on the head of one of the elders, crying: “This in honor of your eyes, Jrous!” Then other shots followed, amid which I heard Jrous's voice ordering me to flee, while he stood in the midst of a raging battle.

I obeyed his command and crossed the brink of the abyss with the utmost care, and found myself on the safe side of the valley, hoping Jrous would follow me so that we might escape together. But it was no more than a moment before everything was thrown into confusion by the arrival of a number of Sheikh Nimrod's soldiers, and the fighting flared anew. I understood then that this was the beginning of a revolt for which I was not responsible, though I had been Jrous's partner in the cause of its breaking out on that day. Nor was it lost on me that my friend, in agreement with his bride Shamma, had tried first to open for me the way of escape, and then to fight to the death for a purpose they had worked for together, as he had told me; and no wonder I set down in my heart a great debt to them, reminding me of that magnanimity and sacrifice which I had known in the most desperate of straits and the most evil of places.

I reached the tunnel at sunset, with the village bell tolling and the din of battle mounting. I cast one last glance behind, and there was Jrous, struck down at the narrow pass. I no longer turned aside for anything, but plunged on alone, stumbling through the darkness, leaving Baakoura, the town of Sheikh Nimrod, to bury her dead and to dig, instead of the single grave, graves upon graves.

Do not ask me how I found the paved road and returned to Beirut on that pitch-black night, for I lost my way again and again; and were you to bring me now to the neighborhood of that cave, I should not know where it was.

Yet in honor of the memory of my generous friend I am still pressing the authorities to rescue that forgotten village — but... where is anyone who will listen? And often I avoid telling this tale of mine, lest I be thought another Jrous and become a laughingstock among my friends — and how many are the mockers!