In total, 17 norias have survived, small and large, in a more or less satisfactory condition. Most of them can be viewed up close or even climbed up stone steps to the base of the wheel. By the way, it was from here, from the Middle East, that the crusaders brought to Europe the idea of water mills – as well as windmills.
By the way, the legacy of the Crusaders occupies not the last place among architectural monuments in Syria and Lebanon. The turbulent political upheavals of the 11th-13th centuries left their mark primarily in the abundance of castles, of which there are no fewer here than in the valley of some Loire. The castles were built by both the Crusaders themselves and their opponents – the Muslims. The special feature of the castles is that it is not always possible to take them by storm, so the besiegers used various tricks such as poisoning the water, a Trojan horse, spies and traitors. As a result, the castles passed from hand to hand without significant destruction, and the new owners also fortified them anew. This continued until long-range artillery finally proved to humanity that all these castles are nonsense.
Now the Syrian government charges pounds for every fortress, and after five or six visited castles their names and appearance get muddled in the head. Only historical parallels remain: here was the headquarters of the Assassins sect, here Saladin lived, here he also wanted to live, but could not break through the walls and left for the previous one, and so on.
First of all, it is worth visiting the famous Syrian Krak des Chevaliers, 60 kilometers west of the city of Homs. Homs itself is nothing remarkable – a big, noisy, uninteresting city – but tourists come here precisely to take a minibus to Krak des Chevaliers, a 12th-century crusader castle. The castle is perfectly preserved, with all its premises, secret passages to the outside, rows of walls and towers. In addition to living quarters, there were stables, halls for games and celebrations, a church, warehouses and much more, which allowed the Hospitaller knights to live here under siege for several years. In the 13th century, the Egyptian sultan Baibars, with incredible efforts, managed to break the outer wall, but behind it there was an inner wall, much stronger than the first, after which the sultan was so upset that he lured the crusaders out by deception and gave them the opportunity to leave for Europe unhindered.
Today Europeans pay $6 per person to enter the castle (students – 20 cents). True, the external, breathtaking impression of the castle turns out to be deceptive – inside, when you scurry through the dark casemates and stone sack rooms, the charm drops significantly.
The castles of Syria and Lebanon can be studied for more than one week. A decent citadel has been preserved in almost every city. One of the most majestic is in the city of Aleppo, the second largest in Syria. Aleppo itself is a city of markets; there are surprisingly many of them here. They trade in everything, and not only Arabs but also Turks. Judging by the remarks of the traders, Russian faces are not new here; our compatriots, however, go to Aleppo not to see the citadel at all, but to engage in shuttle business. We, on the other hand, went to the fortress (which the crusaders never managed to take) and observed from the height of the parapets a panorama of the city and its surroundings.
Concrete ruined Arab cities. It was after the invention of concrete that they lost much of their color and turned into dusty-gray dumps of building materials. Concrete is everywhere: residential buildings and most public buildings are made of it, it lies around as cinder blocks in all vacant lots, frightening with protruding rusty wire, and mosques are also built from it, after which no one wants to photograph them anymore. All this is covered with concrete dust, and as a result, from a bird's-eye view, a colorful eastern city that has survived more than one millennium looks like a ridiculous cement factory.
So, after the fifth day of our stay in the country, we concluded that we had seen enough of Syria. We looked at Damascus, Christian shrines, saw Palmyra and Hama, Homs and Aleppo, visited a dozen stone-sack fortresses. For the rest of our vacation, we had booked a hotel on the Mediterranean coast in Lebanese Byblos.
Lebanon frightened, delighted and amazed us. At the border, where we arrived in an antediluvian minibus from the city of Homs, they stamped us out of the Syrian Arab Republic, but did not wish to let us into Lebanon. The border officer stated that his country could only be reached by air. I informed him that I had called the embassy and that they thought otherwise. He reasonably noted that he knew better. I said that I was flying out of Beirut and had a hotel reservation in Byblos. He replied that for him it was all baby talk.
After half an hour of bickering in English and French, it turned out that the problem was my wife – unmarried women aged 17 to 30 are not allowed into Lebanon on principle. This is where a fake copy of the marriage certificate in English, certified with a fake seal of a supposedly notary office, came in handy. I had put together this splendid document on a home computer and printed it right there. Our passports and the original marriage certificate made no impression on the Lebanese, but they simply admired the crude fake. Visas were opened immediately (at $17 each), and the entire border post staff welcomed us to Lebanese soil.
Several such families streamed to the beach of our hotel in Byblos early in the morning: two or three men, seven or eight women. Wrapped in all black, with their heads, faces, and legs covered, wearing black gloves, they, poor things, could not even touch the water, and the expression on their silent faces at the sight of my wife, snorting with pleasure in the warm clear water, remained a mystery to us. Most likely, they think that is how it should be, and they do not get upset. But when we looked at them, we felt sad.
To avoid shocking the local population, it is best to swim and sunbathe in Byblos, the most advanced enclave of European civilization in Lebanon.
By the way, Syria also has a sea. At least, that is what geographical maps and some guidebooks claim. But they say there are few hotels there, and the sea water is polluted beyond measure, so swimming does not bring much pleasure. However, I suspect that tourists do not go there because of the Syrians: while a white person is swimming, they probably gather in large crowds and continuously watch his movements, or even swim after him. In any case, that is how it seems to me.
Nothing like this happens in Byblos. Representatives of Lebanon's golden youth come here to "let loose". They dress in European fashion, go to Maronite or Armenian churches (the latter are especially numerous in Lebanon), eat in restaurants and pizzerias, drink cola. In Byblos there is even a "Pizza Hut" and pastry cafes with French croissants. Life here is much more expensive than in the neighboring city of Tripoli, but it is also more comfortable. In Syria, and indeed in the northern part of Lebanon, practically none of this exists. By the way, in Syria, instead of the products of Coca-Cola or Pepsi, which we did not find, we discovered local analogues with poetic names – "Ugarit Cola" and Cheer Up (instead of 7 Up).
Moreover, Byblos is interesting because the remains of dozens of cultures that successively replaced one another on the Lebanese coast over the last five or six thousand years are gathered here. Amorites, Hyksos, Philistines, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Crusaders, and then again Arabs and Turks – all of them tried to leave their mark on this city. As a result, today the central part of Byblos is one continuous excavation site: more and more architectural monuments are being extracted from the ground, which are immediately moved aside to make room for even more ancient foundations. Particularly valuable finds are moved to the National Museum, while cobblestones and column remains are left in Byblos.
Here we leisurely rested for three days, washing off the dust of cities, bazaars, and the desert in the Mediterranean Sea. On the last day of our stay in Lebanon, we went to Beirut. I won't say that the capital left a positive impression on us. It would be just the place to film movies based on the Apocalypse. The gigantic number of antediluvian, foul-smelling cars, multiplied by the complete absence of traffic rules, creates a feeling of panic.
Something similar had happened to me once in Cairo, but there I at least knew where the hotel was, while in Beirut we only had the evening before boarding a plane that took off late at night. As a result, after failing in our attempts to explain to the taxi drivers that we wanted to see the city center ('The center is everywhere here' was the answer), we set off for a couple of hours to Baalbek – the pearl of Lebanon and the entire Middle East.
The temple complex in Baalbek has survived just perfectly for these places, given the almost two-thousand-year period of depreciation. The two giant sanctuaries, built in the Roman style, exceed in size all the heritage of antiquity that we have seen so far, taken together. They could outshine even the Athenian Parthenon – in size and in degree of preservation. We came here right at sunset: first, because we wanted to capture the play of orange light and shadow, and second, such was the will of Allah, who had stuck us with a car that was having fits, and a driver equally prone to fits.
The engine would not pull uphill, roared with strain, and the scoundrel of a driver dragged us for another half hour to the house of his acquaintance so that he could bargain with us over the price of the trip, since the old man himself did not know a word of European languages. The acquaintance also turned out to be ignorant of linguistics, so we jumped out of the car and ran for a while with our suitcases along the Beirut–Baalbek highway. The polyglot driver could not catch us, because he imprudently tried to do so in the car. Soon we caught another taxi.
After all this, the Lebanese people gave us one last surprise. At sunset, when the orange light and shadows were already turning into twilight, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the entrance gate to the Baalbek temple grounds was closed, and the guard had gone home to sleep. Barbed wire separated us from the outside world, so we wandered around the temple for a while longer until we were found.
After the chaos and discomfort of the East, we always think about Europe. Sitting down in the cool seats of an airliner to fly home, we always tell ourselves that next time we will definitely fly to the West – where there are direction signs on the roads, where the city map matches its topographical contours, and trains arrive and depart on time. But I know for sure – on the day we get to a clean, spick-and-span, and well-groomed Europe, we will again start dreaming of magical wonders, the dear carelessness, and mysterious monuments of the East.