Village life destroyed by war gets paltry boost from weekenders

Homes bombarded in the civil war now draw wealthy visitors seeking respite from Beirut heat

AS THE sun sinks below the molten silver slab of the Mediterranean, Shemlan is suffused with gold and green. The soft light plays on the white stone walls and red tile roofs of the village. Shemlan is 1,000 years old. Many of the venerable olive trees on the slope below the house we built in 1968 are twice that. Our house was the first to be built within the village for a century and the first ever by foreigners.

Our contractor used cut stones, arches, floor and roof tiles from a dismantled missionary school dating from 1868. Palestinians and Kuwaitis planted villas on the crest of the hill above Shemlan and on its edges, but not within the village’s cosy precincts.

Soon after we moved into our house, my husband asked our neighbour, Khalil Hitti, how long it would take for us to be accepted as Shemlanis, most of whom belonged to six families.

Khalil, a small, dapper man employed as a librarian at the British Council, replied, “We Hittis came here in the 11th century as tenant farmers on the lands of the Muqqadams. The Tabibs came in the 15th century. Hittis still don’t speak to Tabibs.”

When I told this story to Samira Farjallah, Hitti by birth, at a restaurant in a village in the Maronite mountains, she smiled. “You were always more acceptable than the Tabibs. They are troublemakers. You know, your house is still known as Beit al-Hindi.” This translates as “House of the Indian”, since my husband was Indian.

We left as civil war refugees in mid-1976 and sold the house to a Lebanese doctor in 1981, 16 months before Israel invaded Lebanon and bombarded the village, leaving two large holes in our roof and heavy damage everywhere. Then Maronite Christian and Druze militiamen turned Shemlan and neighbouring Souq al-Gharb, straddling a strategic mountain ridge in the Druze-dominated Chouf area, into a battlefront. By that time, a dozen people had been killed in Shemlan and the villagers, all Maronites except for the Druze Muqqadams, had fled.

When we paid a visit in 1991, after the war, we found no one.

All the houses, some elegant mansions built in the 19th century, had been gutted by looters. Grass stood knee-high and the geraniums in our garden were as tall as I, their stems as thick and woody as walking sticks.

Today, Shemlan has recovered partially and provides a summer escape for residents of the capital. Many houses have been repaired, boxy modern ones built. But Shemlanis are few. The old died, the middle-aged settled elsewhere, and the young prefer to live in throbbing Beirut. There is little work here: a carpenter’s workroom, an ironmonger, a dingy shop, a restaurant.

Until the civil war erupted in 1975, Shemlan hosted the British Arabic language school, known fondly as the “spy school” because a graduate was a Russian double agent. Shemlanis were teachers, cooks, and clerks there.

As we strolled past the Maronite church, George Eid observed, “Of the 100 family houses, only 20 are occupied by Shemlanis – 60-70 per cent of the houses and land have been sold to ‘outsiders’. They stay here for a few weeks in the year and don’t care about the village. We are trying to form a new Shemlan club, to bring people together, encourage Shemlanis to return. But it’s difficult. Many sold out because, after they left, they needed money to live. They can’t afford to buy now.” (Our house, which cost $45,000, would fetch $2 million now).

George observed, “We are trying to convince the church to build temporary accommodation for Shemlanis, so they can rent and come home.” During May, townsmen and villagers all over Lebanon have been voting for municipal councils. But not Shemlanis. A handful decided to keep the sitting council because too few people were prepared to drive up to the village to cast their ballots. George’s wife, Leila, who is on the council, said, “We elected a president without any trouble. But there was a huge battle between two Jabbours who wanted to be vice-president. We chose the lawyer Abu Haidar.” He is a man from elsewhere.