Is Lebanon's Beauty Enough for Us?..

I shall not speak of Lebanon, its mountains, and its beauty. I shall not sing its praises and describe it as the Switzerland of the East, nor shall I try to extol the benefits of summering after they have been studied for years, and after the newspapers have come out telling us that the country earns a million liras from tourism and eight million from summering. We have had our fill of praise and description and rapture over the beauty of our mountains and their scenery. No one has ever outstripped us in the field of talk. We must work, and work quickly, and work sincerely, so that our summering season may revive. Europe is competing with us, and the demand for her is great. I know very well that the greatest obstacle in the way of a flourishing summering season here is the high level of prices — that frightful rise which makes the summer visitor grumble at the cost of things from the moment his feet touch this beloved land until he departs.

We hear of the tariff and we hear of the fixed prices, yet we never see them except on the pages of the newspapers. The summer visitor is astonished at this and loses confidence in those in charge. If the government does not concern itself — not with enacting laws, of which there are so many, but with enforcing them, of which enforcement there is so little — matters will remain as they are, and the summer visitor will exchange Lebanon for other resorts.

Much is told of the treatment dealt out by certain drivers and of their exorbitant demands, and some among us console themselves by saying that this happens in every country of Europe with the foreign tourist. Yes, it happens there with foreigners — but the summer visitor from Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine is no foreigner; he is one of us, bound to us by the ties of language and neighborliness. Moreover, when a man meets with this in Europe and America, he tolerates it for the sake of what he finds there: entertainments, promenades, hotels with every means of comfort, museums, art exhibitions, music, and other things we cannot do without — things that satisfy the tourist's mind and profit him. But here, where only natural beauty and fresh air are offered, the summer visitor finds himself in no mood for indulgence if he is not treated in a manner that encourages him to come to us every year.

We have read in the newspapers of boxes to be hung up in the summering villages, into which every summer visitor may drop a note if he wishes to complain of something. No doubt the boxes will be emptied and their contents read; yet we ask ourselves what the result would be if someone complained of a man of prominence,

or of connections, or of favoritism.

It is very saddening that such questions should circulate on the tongues of so many, and saddening that one cannot answer them as one would wish to be able to answer.

We have borrowed from certain countries the system of "baksheesh," and it has become a disease in which we have outdone the very nations we copied — as we do in everything we borrow. This "baksheesh" has become a pillar upon whose size, great or small, depends the servant's treatment of you everywhere.

We have advanced a little in some of our resorts; in others we are still backward. Enter a café and you will see fruit peels on its floor; listen to the people and you will hear loud voices and orders shouted by the man giving them as though he were master of the whole resort and not of the café alone. People eat in the streets, play in them, and throw their refuse into them, until they become such that one hates to walk there.

Is this encouraging to the summer visitor?

Where are the government information bureaus?
Where are the sanatoriums for those who need rest and a measure of treatment? Where are the places set aside for children's play?

Where are the cinema houses in the resorts? Where are the theatrical performances organized by companies? Where are the organized zajal and singing parties? A singer or a zajal poet gives a party: five hundred tickets are sold for a place that holds three hundred, and then begins the scramble for seats and the hurling of words — or of chairs. Does a single party ever begin at the hour announced? Or is the summer visitor forced to wait about an hour until the crowd is complete, or until the arrival of the person under whose patronage the party has been placed?

Does all this encourage summering in Lebanon? Where is the entertainment? Are we to be content with gambling for entertainment? Are its clubs to spread through the country, with no one daring to fight them because they are protected, even though the laws forbid them?

How does the sincere man among us feel when he sees all this? Does he not grieve? Does he not want everything in Lebanon to be good and complete? Do we not dream of the day when it will be the summer resort of the whole East? Of the day when it will rival the finest resorts in the world?

Those in authority among us, and the people themselves, must see these facts as they are and strive earnestly to raise the standard. All are responsible; and unless every Lebanese does his duty, our condition will never come right.