In the morning we walked to what is known as the Roman quarry, though I believe it is pre-Roman, and possibly alien. This is about 10 minutes down the road, behind a derelict petrol station and some piles of rubbish, where an enormous hole is scooped out of the earth. Along the sides are small caves – either workmen’s chambers or a necropolis, it’s unclear to me from the signs at the quarry. In the quarry itself, rising at at angle, is a megalith, the stone of the pregnant woman, eighty times anything at Stonehenge. From here the aliens took stones to form the base of the temple of Jupiter as recorded in the Gilgamesh story (or so they say, who am I to contradict them). Just by it is another, even larger stone, one which was found only in 2014, during times of peace in between war, and it has not been fully excavated so its size is not known. At the entrance to the quarry is a souvenir shop proclaiming this to be THE LARGEST STONE IN THE WORLD, run by a former army man who claims to be the saviour of the site with a twenty year old newspaper clipping to prove it.
Behind and rising up the hill is a Christian graveyard and we climbed up to a closed mausoleum, chatting idly about the utopias we would create if we had a city to work with. No cars, only public transport, sortitive city government, the works.
We walked back down the road to the shrine of Syeda Khawla, the infant daughter of Imam Hussein, who died here in Baalbek on the way from Karbala to Damascus. The shrine is covered in shining metal and inside is a cool, dark tomb. I was in the women’s side of course, with scores of women in abayas praying and taking selfies, tying rosaries and scraps of silk to the grille surrounding the tomb. Behind the tomb is an ancient tree rising through a hole in the ceiling. There seemed no way to get to it, but it too was surrounded by signs of prayer.
In the compound of the shrine is also a small Hezbollah museum, with weaponry, images of martyrs and dioramas of the resistance. In the centre a fountain ran, and its basin was lined with images in light relief of flowers, guns, wheelchairs.
After leaving the shrine we went into the souq to find lunch and scored gold. We had been told that in many small towns butchers often have a grill running at mealtimes and we found one such, with plastic chairs set outside it. We ordered some grilled mutton, complete with bits of grilled fat. I know many people find it repellent but I don’t understan why, it’s such a delicious thing. Next to the butcher was a furn where three or four men were making sfiha baalbeki, fingers moving rapidly to pinch off elastic bits of dough, pat it out, add a dollop of spiced meat and pinch it up into an open pastry. We ordered a half dozen and had them fresh from the oven, running with freshly squeezed lemon juice. This is a great speciality of the town, and surely there can be no better way to enjoy it.
A stroll through the town followed and eventually we arrived at, first, a well known pastry shop for some baklava. They were washing the floors at the time but we were ushered to a table in the corner which they left mostly dry as the entire family came out with rubber slippers and rubber wipers to wash the water out of the door. Then a hunt for coffee, which was unsuccessful but we found a roadside stand that had set up some battered sofas in an empty plot and squeezed pomegranate juice on demand. After this we returned to the Roman site and wandered through it a little more, going back to places we had particularly enjoyed and trying to find the megaliths at the base.
A really lovely day, all in all, all holidays should be like this. In the evening I had a bit of work, but that, too, went smoothly. So the end of our last full day here in Lebanon.
Today we leave for the airport at 5, and until then have been loitering about this ancient hotel