Lebanese Rigidities! Our Idea of Summering

— Third Installment —

Few among the peoples enjoy “summering” as the Lebanese people do. And this too is one of the blessings that go to waste in Lebanon — I do not say one we do not deserve, but rather that we do not know how to value it and foster it..

It seems to me that in the idea of “summering” we have scope for creating an institution unique in the world, one that would give Lebanon a special distinction and a notable fame.

The idea of “summering,” in its ideal form, rests on two important foundations: first, providing the means of rest, quiet, and health in the given summer resort; and second, providing the means of physical and moral benefit for the summer visitor.

The beauty of nature in Lebanon, despite our neglect of it, is bewitching, and our climate, with its air and its sun, benefits the ailing and the healthy alike. All that remains for the summer visitor, then, is to order his life in the fullest way so as to obtain the desired results: by living in a beautiful, comfortable mountain village house; by living simply and without affectation; by enjoying nature through the “stroll” and the “outing”; by taking his ease and wearing informal dress; by giving himself over to reading; by laying plans and making personal resolutions for the new year; by cheerful joint work with the other summer visitors in the service of the village where they spend the months of their vacation; by encouraging the various sports and taking part in them; by searching out the ancient ruins in which our country stands alone and working to preserve them. In a word: by understanding the idea of summering correctly, and by realizing that idea.

But we refuse all this. Most of our houses in the mountain are more like palaces, city houses, and skyscrapers — as far as can be from village dwellings and their atmosphere. Our sport is sitting for long hours in the cafés and the gambling salons; our stroll is walking on the public highway, jostling with the automobiles and breathing in their dust; our rest is a kind of utter laziness accompanied by no mental or manual production — it is more like the rest of the “goat.” Cleanliness and sanitary conditions are matters to blush over: the flies, the mosquitoes, and the sewer problems are things the summer visitor expects and endures as the price of summering, or as an unavoidable tax. The invitations and banquets never end, and we travel from mountain to mountain to attend luncheons, dinners, and cocktail parties... Our formal dress we will not give up, however much it torments us. Our voices are the most vexing thing in our summering — indeed, in us altogether: we live in a continual din, summer and winter, and it never occurs to us to revolt against ourselves. In summer, certain sounds follow one another upon your ears night and day, disturbing your rest until they tame you and you grow used to them: the sounds of the neighbor woman and the children of the quarter, the rooster, the dog, the mule bells, the chants of the vendors, and the automobile — above all the “bus horn” that reaches a certain “elbow” in the road at five o'clock in the morning and gives free rein to its “horn,” crying: “Take heed and wake up, O people, for the hour of the descent to Beirut has come”... And there are the sounds of “stone-breaking,” for building or for road repair, which — according to our own rules — begins at the start of summer and ends after the summering season is over, making the traffic problem in the mountains more complicated than on the coast. And if you are summering in Dhour el-Choueir, you are obliged to sleep every night to the music of the Hadi café, which is a kind of ordinary “jazz”; and on Saturday night the tunes of Lebanon's “celebrated” songstresses from the neighboring Nasr café mingle with these strains of “jazz,” and you and your taste are stricken with a musical calamity unique of its kind... And our aim in summering, on the whole, amounts to no more than eating Lebanon's famous fruit and gaining a few “kilos,” so as to return to the city with new vigor.

This is our idea of summering. So what is the idea of the Department of Tourism and Summering?!