Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" by P. J. O’Rourke Read Free Book Online Page B

climb across the top of people to beat one of the
illegal passengers. There was more shooting outside. I found myself in a full body press with a Shiite girl. She was rather nicely
built but over the top from claustrophobia and shrieking like a
ruptured cow. "What's Arabic for `calm down'?" I yelled.
    "As far as I can tell," said Miss Phillips, "there's no such
word."
    We did eventually get under way, the bus backing over people
then swaying horribly in blinding dust on the half-lane-wide mountain road. We were only stopped, unloaded, searched, interrogated
and held at gunpoint several times.
    Fortunately, the Lebanese are a clean people, even the very
poor ones. It wasn't like being packed into a bus on a sweltering
day with a bunch of French or anything.
    Akbar was waiting at Bater. I found out later he'd also come up from the city the day before and waited all afternoon in case I
got thrown out or evacuated or tried to get back to Beirut on foot.

    Travel to the North is less arduous. George Moll, the video
editor at ABC-TV's Beirut bureau, and I went on a trip to the
Bsherri Cedars. Traffic on the coast road north of the city is stalled
by checkpoints. Amazing what a few guys standing around with
guns can do to create gridlock. "I G Lebanon" bumper stickers are
popular with the motorists. "Kill them all-Let God sort them out"
T-shirts are popular with the militias.
    It's important to remember, when dealing with these militias,
that the gunmen are mostly just kids and they're getting a big kick
out of the whole thing. I suppose this is only natural when young
people lack proper recreational facilities and well-supervised activities to keep them out of mischief. They need sympathy and
understanding. Or a sixteen-inch shell from the battleship New
Jersey.
    I wanted to visit the gorge of the Nahr el Kelb, the River of the
Dog, a strategic point on the Lebanese coast just north of Beirut
where for more than three thousand years invading armies have
carved stelae commemorating their passage. A tunnel for the coast
highway now cuts through the gorge wall, and the carvings are
reached via a ramp above the traffic. The cuneiform characters of
Nebuchadnezzar II, the stela of the Pharaoh Ramses, the Assyrian
has reliefs, a Latin inscription from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius,
Greek carvings from the Seleucid empire-they've all been completely effaced by air pollution.
    Don't go to the famous Jeita Grottoes at the source of the Dog
River, either. These have been turned into a military training base.
Although what kind of military training goes on among a bunch of
stalactites lit by colored spotlamps, I can't tell you.
    A few miles north of Nahr el Kleb is the Casino de Liban on
Juniye Bay. This was pre-war Lebanon's attempt at Monte Carlo and
used to have elaborate floor shows featuring plump blondes who
were out of work in Europe. You can still gamble there, though just
being in this part of the world is a gamble enough for most people.
The blondes are gone.

    On up the coast road, twenty-four miles from Beirut, is
Byblos. Since the Christians were run out of the Beirut airport, the
Phalange has taken to landing planes on the highway here. Expect
another traffic jam. Byblos was considered by the ancients to be the
oldest city in the world. In fact, it has been an established metropolis for at least six thousand years. Main Street, however, looks
most like the oldest part of Fort Lauderdale.
    By the seaport, however, is an Arab fortification atop a Frankish castle constructed with chunks of Roman temples which had
been built over a Phoenician town that was established on the
foundations of a Neolithic village-quite a pile of historic vandalism.
    The war has not touched Byblos except to keep anyone from
coming here. We found one consumptive tour guide playing solitaire in a shack by the entrance to the ruins. He took us through the
deserted remains spieling, with pauses only to cough, a litany