The summer visitor comes to our land seeking rest and in quest of health and vigor. Not long after he is among us he feels vitality and energy: his cheeks have grown rosy, his muscles firm, his step light, his spirits leaping — and he begins to think about how to pass the time, lest boredom overtake him where amusement should, and he longs to discover whatever is new and diverting.
Our summer visitor has grown used, summer after summer, to the pleasure-spots of the Lebanese resorts — which have nothing Lebanese about them: borrowed names, look-alike programs, fixed hours — a mere string of cafés, dance halls, and taverns where he pays much to get little; not to mention their din, which contradicts the very conditions of rest he has wanted ever since he set foot in our beautiful country, fleeing the clamor of his work in pursuit of some delightful pleasure.
Some objector may say: if our guest is a lover of history, there is the citadel of Baalbek and there the palace of Beiteddine, which the Department of Antiquities has taken in hand. And if he loves the open chase, let him tuck a rifle under his arm and shoot sparrows in the neighboring vineyards. And as for swimming — is there no place for him on our azure shore from Tripoli to Sidon where he can pass his time so as not to grow bored?
Summering is no longer merely a matter of exploiting what nature has bestowed, or the monuments and antiquities that past generations created, or what ordinary cheap taste demands; it has become a science and an art — in publicity and allure first, in entertainment, recreation, and direction second, and in gain and profit third.
And art — however scant my knowledge of it — is heart and the sense of beauty. I appeal to woman — for if man is the nation's thinking mind, woman is its beating heart — I appeal to
her to draw upon her delicate sense of beauty beyond the bounds of her own person and her house, and to imagine with me Lebanon, coast and mountain, a homeland for tourists, just as her own house is a destination for callers. Just as we women do our utmost to please our guests — with splendid furnishings, gracious courtesy, good food, sweet company, and abundant entertainment — so the visitor in our great house, which is Lebanon, requires special attention for his rest, his amusement, and his contentment.
And there is no exaggeration in this saying: the unity of traditions and customs, the unity of tongue, the unity of aims, between the host family, Lebanon, and the guest family — Egyptian or Iraqi, Syrian or sister Saudi — makes it easy for us to cast our lovely summer land into a captivating mold with a special Eastern stamp, a unique local form, and a color at once Arab and modern, so that it may rise to keep pace with the advanced nations, above all those that count themselves a resort for tourists and a shrine for pilgrims.
Have you ever heard of a traveler in Madrid who did not see the bullfights? Or does not everyone with money and time enough melt with longing to attend the cinema festival at Cannes? What nation did not take pride in joining the Olympic Games in Berlin before 1939? And was it not a rare opportunity for whoever pressed himself among the thousands of souls in the Holy Year in Rome three years ago, or at the recent coronation of the Queen of Britain?
What garment, then, shall our dear Lebanon put on — a splendid new garment to hearten the tourist and draw him to its blue shores and its towering mountains?
Beirut strutted in a splendid new garment the day the UNESCO organization held the first of its conferences there. We Lebanese
came to know, on that day, our artists and our men of letters, our universities and our associations, our newspapers and our organizations. Why then have we ceased to call upon their inspiration and to keep them steadily serving themselves and their homeland? Might not summering be fertile soil for art, literature, and music, for comfort and recreation, and for the public health? Then whoever passed through the streets of our capital would be struck by their cleanliness and their freedom from filth both microbial and human — exactly as we housewives do when a guest descends upon us. For it is only natural to remove whatever offends taste, and to prepare whatever leads to delight and good cheer — because the spirit of beauty latent within us, and the love of being moved by it and of moving others, takes no tangible shape unless some incentive summons it or some occasion arises.
And what occasion better suits us for displaying the best that we have been given than the occasion of the summer season, which brings us our most important economic resource? If we can manage to maintain perfect cleanliness through the summer — the season in which nature does least to help man — our coastal and mountain centers will emerge in the most splendid of garments, one it would be hard for them to cast off afterwards — by force of habit. And where is the harm, if we make ourselves clean and adorn ourselves for the sake of others? Do we not do the very same in our private lives, when we go to receive a guest or make ready for an engagement?
Around the year 1932 the Greek steamship company organized an excursion to the Cedars, beginning at the port of Beirut and running to the harbor of Tripoli, whence the travelers took motorcars up to the Cedars region — a short trip taking two days and costing no more than ten Lebanese liras. But today we