LOSE YOUR HAT IN LEBANON

Evidently we were the first tourists of the morning when our driver braked and swerved into a few strategically placed parking spots along the mountain road.   Someone pointed out a sign that advertised the most original castle in the world.  The driver explained that each stone in the small castle had been designed and hand-carved by the same artist, a stone mason of a very special sort.  He had been at it 60 years; it deserved a few minutes of our time.  Real quick.  If we had been maneuvering up the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia I would've known the place was a well-contrived tourist trap.

A castle's record

But if tourists had any reason to pay attention, this nameless artist deserved the benefits of a livelihood to accompany his humble journey.  Every stone was a visual statement.  A study.   Some of them recorded personal experiences.  Others commemorated political events.  Some were a social statement.   Others a commentary on life.  Some had the likes of a royal coat of arms.  Others looked like cartoons.  And each one came out of the chisel of one man's life.

Even before I stepped into the shadowy wax museum that the castle housed, I admired this man for his transparency and emotional honesty in a world full of pretense and effects.  His willingness to be open gave him a certain strength:  Even the front door was his statement to any who had ever dealt him a tough blow.  The cruel schoolmaster, the taunting classmates, the old girlfriend would have to bow very, very low to enter the four foot door into his life!  

Lebanon's pride:
Taking the Phoenician alphabet to the world

It seems the artist, a sensitive soul, had found school difficult.  The structure of the classroom had been hard.  He was often the brunt of the teacher's wrath and his classmates' bad humor.  School told him he was nothing and would amount to nobody.   Then, as a young man, he fell in love.  The beautiful young thing left him heartbroken because it was known he would go nowhere in life.  He could not provide.  

Everything hurt.  Life was a failure.

And so, young and determined, with finally a loyal woman alongside him who must've invested every bit as much as he did, he began a lifelong project of proving that he would make something of his life:  If nothing else, he would create a three-dimensional record of how everyday life had shaped him--a commentary on one's choice to be a victim or builder, to bemoan one's life or create something from it.   The results?   An engaging, honest autobiography of a wounded but emotionally resilient and creative soul.

It's also the only engaging wax museum I've ever visited.  (By the way, I've come to the conclusion everyone should plan a wax museum of their life.  Even if you can't produce it, it's excellent therapy to identify the events that shaped you...and give the world around you the opportunity to share it with you.  Some who see it may take responsibility!)

Some of the wax figures really moved.  Many didn't.  But they all were alive with emotion, interaction, commentary--nostalgia as well as regret, memories to remember and some to forget.  Every scene was supported with a  mass of original, authentic props, detailed and expressive of the artist's Arabic-Turkish-Muslim-Orthodox-and-more world:  His parents.  The family home and the market place.  The cleric's visits and prayer time.  Holiday gatherings and contraband sips from the keg.  Childhood games, mischief, sweethearts.  And school.  

Memories have feelings

I stood by the school scene, struck by my own urge to grab the scowling school master's muscled arm and shush the taunts of the grinning guys around him.  It's not like a movie, where the camera cuts from trauma to relief.  It's a frozen moment pressed onto a child's world.  A moment--probably one of many--that shaped his life and that he spent the better part of his life rising above.

Evidently he chose to do that by inviting the rest of the world to share those shaping  moments.  I found myself confirming the injustice.  Validating everyday sort of pain.  But he didn't stay there.  As  the scenes changed, I realized he had better to share! 
  
The very process of capturing the difficult moments must have released him from them, because he carried us away from that shame to humor, gentleness, curiosity.  And mischief.   Even the ending was a whimsical experience, a live love song in the trappings of old Lebanon, delivered with the personal Lebanese touch.  

"Do you love me?" with tea

It didn't take much to read between the lines.  A middle-aged gentleman accompanied himself in a three-note harmony as he crooned in heavily accented English:  "Do you love me?" 

I couldn't help but think that the only one who might have a problem answering that would be the old girlfriend who thought he'd come to no good.

We laughed about the subtleties of the artist's message and shared the ambience at the end with a gregarious group of young Australian Lebanese visiting their cousins in Beirut.  (So happened, after sharing notes on Sydney and Beirut, we met up with them four more times as we moved up the mountain to the cedars of Lebanon.  By the end of the day, we were fast friends!)

Friends worthy of a pose.

But....getting ahead of the story...on the way out of the castle, a rush of whispers informed us that the artist himself was coming to visit us.  The advantage of being first in the day.  

It was classic Lebanese--a personal museum experience where introductions and explanations and connections are established like we deserved to leave as part of the family.  Whether it was a marketing ploy or not doesn't matter:  The old artist showed up at the door to bid his guests off.  (Does the Smithsonian offer that touch?)  But in the cordial mix of being introduced, he singled out a geologist in our group. Maybe it was because in a crowd of tall Americans, they could look each other in the eye.

Translated:  I appreciate you more than the hat

"I like your hat," the grinning artist said in accented English.  

The geologist, a transplanted European with a few Middle Eastern friends himself, patted his head like he was trying to remember what he was wearing.  Then, without breaking for breath, he lifted the khaki canvas off and extended it ceremoniously.  "Here, you must have it!"  

The artist grinned, looked around with satisfaction.  "I am honored!"  The trade took place.  In real Lebanese fashion.  In typical Middle East tradition.  That's what you do when someone tells you they like something of yours.  It's an expression of your friendship to give them what they admired.  The meaning was not lost on either men.  

The artist inspected the flimsy khaki hat with obvious pleasure.  Why shouldn't he?  He'd said he liked it!  And by anyone's standard, the hat matched his jacket and pants far better than the stiff white canvas hat.  It fit perfectly.  As for the geologist?  He now owned an artist's hat.  And he could claim a hug.

In the end, everyone's better off.

It was an endearing exchange for any two strangers.  But it carried even more meaning because of the person we'd gotten to know within the castle museum.

Not a shabby exhibit at all.  Not a tourist trap either.  Especially when the slow kid in school could say to himself, to his wife of 60 years, and to a circle of curious Americans stopped on the side of the road, "See.  I'm not a nobody.  I have a new friend...and a new hat!"

We all have different ways we express our value.  We all have been blessed with different resources to use.  But in Lebanon a nice hat, a shiny car, and a beautiful villa are a significant measure of what a person has accomplished with his life.   Even from across the valley, the artist's life looked impressive.

Not shabby:  Castle on the left.  Home on the right.  The hillside is his.