Their Idea of Summering — The Girl Guides' Trek from Jezzine to Falougha

A Lebanese girl recounts to us the Girl Guides' journey on foot from Jezzine to Falougha

I saw her just after her return from a journey unlike any that people are used to. Her forearms and neck were reddened, her cheeks aflame from walking and from spending ten days in the open air. She said:

Many of my companions used to shake their heads and shoulders and say: You join the Girl Guides troop and go from place to place, with the ground for your bed and the sky for your blanket? What frivolity is this — what madness, rather! How could it enter our minds to leave our comfortable homes, our delightful parties and evening gatherings, to sleep in the forests and on the ground like savage tribes?

If my reader will follow me, she can judge which of us was right — my companions or I.

We set off, in God's name, by car to Jezzine. We were ten girls: Maud Moussa Nour, Ghita Wehbe, Céline Kalzi (from Aleppo), Milia Lahd, Edvick Dabromouth, Odile Dondel, Stella Barouk, Thérèse Haj, Manon Shleila, and I, Lubna Nader. From Jezzine we carried our packs on our backs and set out on the road to the village of Bater, which lies 8 kilometers from Jezzine. The peasants along the road would stop us and ask where we were going, and invite us to take coffee in their houses, whispering among themselves that we would never manage to reach Bater — yet they encouraged us and wished us a safe arrival. The road between Jezzine and Bater has not yet been reached by "the blessing of asphalt," and walking it is hard. After a two hours' march we reached Bater, and there the generous countryman Adel Bey Hamdan and his wife, a lady of abundant kindness and refined breeding, welcomed us warmly and fed us a delicious supper. On the roof we undid our packs and belts and lay down in the moonlight, after saying the evening prayer together. We stretched out gazing at the clear sky studded with glittering stars above our heads; we were tired, and we sank into a deep sleep.

That night was the first time we slept on hard ground with nothing over us but a single blanket. On the second day we rose early and bade farewell, regretfully, to that hospitable Lebanese house, and set out toward Moukhtara, on a road not free of dust and pebbles, but beautiful for the vines and fig trees along its sides and for the enchanting views it overlooks: there lies a great green valley, with little streams running along its floor.

We walked singing songs at the top of our voices, their echoes filling the air around us. When we reached Moukhtara we were dead with fatigue. But it was a fatigue dispelled by the kindness of Kamal Bey Jumblatt and his refined lady, his wife, who brought us into the beautiful gardens and said to us, "These gardens are yours."

After a fine supper in the house of the scion of the Jumblatt family, we sang in the palace garden amid the rustling of the branches and the murmuring of the waters.

We kept thinking that but for this journey we would have remained ignorant of this region of our country, and we asked ourselves how a person can love his homeland without coming to know its parts. Which of us knew the Chouf before today — save those who were born there? We used to hear of the Lebanese spirit of hospitality without ever coming to know it.

After Moukhtara we set out on the longest stage: Beiteddine, then Ain Zhalta. The road is well asphalted and climbs little by little. We walked four hours and covered 18 kilometers, then reached Ain Zhalta, where we stopped at the house of our friend Mrs. Alice Georges Sabbagha, who fed us from her delicious provisions and prepared every comfort for us after that great weariness. How lovely that rest was, and how lovely those days, in which we tried to strengthen the bonds of friendship among the members of the troop through shared life, shared thinking, the performance of shared service, exchanging talk without fear of criticism, and expressing opinions in complete freedom.

After Ain Zhalta we reached Mdeirej, where we met the Jesuit Father "Gillet," who looks after no small number of the Palestinian refugees. He was waiting for us with a truck carrying our tents; we climbed into the truck, which the priest drove himself, and set out toward Falougha.

We pitched camp in a forest whose like is rarely to be found: lofty pine trees rising straight up into the sky without a bend, their branches weaving domes above our heads.

We stood for some minutes feasting our eyes on the enchanting natural beauty, then set about preparing the camp and pitched our tents. Darkness had spread and the moon was still behind Sannine, so we resorted to little pocket flashlights and to the old lanterns that the villagers use in storms. We slept in the forest for the first time in our lives, and felt the cool, refreshing night air, and heard the singing of the birds and the crickets.

Some of the local people offered a house for the priest to sleep in, and he would say the evening prayer for us and thank God for the beauty of what He has created for us.

We spent five days in the camp, living with nature, in a clean, candid atmosphere free of affectation and artifice. And there we learned, above all else, that a girl has no ornament, no adornment more beautiful than simplicity, and no pleasure sweeter than pure friendship freely exchanged — and that any girl can walk 45 kilometers on her own two feet in three days and still keep the beauty of her figure... indeed, grow more beautiful and graceful.