Lebanese Tours: The Lebanese and Travel

Here is a new corner... and a delightful one, which Mrs. Eva Badr Malik will present to us — every month — with the distillation of her personal observations, drawn from a fund of varied experiences of life. Mrs. Malik's observations will revolve, in particular, around the Lebanese outside their country and within it. And it will be a pleasure to move with her on these tours as she skillfully draws for us pictures and scenes caught by her mind, ablaze with feeling and intelligence, so that it has laughed at times and ached at others...

"The Woman's Voice," which takes pride in Mrs. Malik as an outstanding woman's element who holds in store a treasure of knowledge and excellence of experience, thanks her for sharing with the readers this review of her valuable observations.

The Lebanese love travel with a mad love and will spend themselves to bring it about. Lebanese ears are sharp of hearing, forever glued to the ground, catching with lightning speed every wave connected with a word or a rumor drifting in from any quarter about the possibility of travel on some mission, or delegation, or on a government grant. No sooner does a piece of news spread concerning a trip than thousands of Lebanese rush to put themselves forward, each considering himself possessed of all the necessary qualifications, whatever the object of the journey; indeed each candidate assures himself, his relatives, his friends, and strangers alike that he will without doubt win "the trip," and he has actually begun "packing the bag," and his activity in pursuit of this wish does not subside until the lucky delegates finally depart the country and he gives up hope for this "round" — though he lies in wait, with optimistic patience, to fight the new battle over a new trip...

As for grants and invitations to travel, these are offered by foreign governments to individuals or groups to visit their countries with a view to cementing good relations and, of course, to profiting by it... They are one of the varieties of this age's propaganda, and perhaps the latest "fashion" in this line; in Lebanon they have met with a currency and a demand that prove in practice that they are the most effective means of publicity. As for the Lebanese, it makes no difference to him where the invitation or the grant comes from, nor what kind of propaganda it is — the important thing is the trip in itself.

There remains travel on some mission, the expenses of which the local government bears and for which the notables of the land put themselves forward, especially in the era of independence, when weighty missions have multiplied for Lebanon — such as attending the endless international conferences, not to mention representation abroad and the permanent and non-permanent meetings of the United Nations. These, in their eyes, are trips that "pay," for numerous reasons... and in their eyes, too, no extra qualifications are required of the representative. At the very most, in certain circumstances, he may be compelled to deliver a speech or two — and what Lebanese cannot make a speech, even if he knows no languages?..

Such is the eagerness for travel in Lebanon, and there are two methods a candidate follows to succeed. The first is to place public opinion and the officials before the accomplished fact, by "packing the bag" and announcing the deed with clamor. The second method is to set "pull" in motion — the most effective way in Lebanon of obtaining everything one wants.

Truth to tell, there is a class in Lebanon that travels at its own expense; but of these it gives no pleasure to speak, since their pictures do not appear in the magazines and newspapers, people do not utter their names, and no one debates their qualifications as they do those of the candidates for grants, invitations, and weighty missions...

Would that every Lebanese lover of travel might travel at his own expense; that the grants and invitations might be offered, and the weighty missions entrusted, to those who deserve them — the specialists and the qualified, of whom, God knows, Lebanon has many — so that they might truly brighten "the face of Lebanon" abroad in every kind of representation!