On a remote cliff about 20 miles south of Beirut, a late morning sun roused Imad Beainy. He got out of bed, slipped on a pair of shorts and walked to the cliff’s edge, lighting a joint as he looked over the fruit groves and wild meadows of the Bisri Valley. Hewed between two mountain ranges, the valley extends some six miles along a tributary of the Awali river. In the distance, Beainy glimpsed the sun shining off the cream-colored tiles of the 300-year-old Mar Moussa church. Closer to the cliff, sprinkled around a 15th century Mamluk-Ottoman bridge and the ruins of a Roman temple, lay some 50 other archaeological sites.
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