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Show 224 MADELYN CANNON STEWART SILVER as they had done for millennia. Madelyn was impressed with the delicate stone work, the huge pillars, the hotel gardens, and the evident achievements of early inhabitants of the city. Down the coast from Byblos was Sidon, a town remembered by Madelyn as the place where the Canaanite woman pled with Jesus to heal her daughter; her faith was such that Jesus did so. Madelyn also saw in Sidon a Crusader's castle, and many exam ples of Moorish architecture. Further south was Tyre, with many fishing boats, a harvest underway inland, and prepara tions for observance of the Muslim "Ramadan," about which more later. At this point in her diary Madelyn mentions a largely Arab by the name of Deir Yusein, "Miracle village," which she "spoiled by the Jews." A Jewish man, she wrote, had been experimenting with some powder; one night he used it. The explosion made a great smoke, so great that the Arabs were sure it was the atom bomb; they all fled. Actually, Madelyn was town wrote was told, it was almost harmless but the "miracle" had occurred the Arabs had abandoned their homes, and it was now a Jewish village." Between the western Lebanon Mountains, parallel with and close to the Mediterranean Coast, and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains on the east which divides the country from Syria, is the Bika Valley. It is watered by the Orentes River in the north and the Litani River in the south. Mount Hermon dominates the southeast corner. Often a battleground in historic and pre historic times, Lebanon was created in 1944. The valley is 100 miles long and ten miles wide. Driving south from Baalbeck the Silvers passed through Syrian countryside, and spent a day at El Kerak, which Madelyn, with her French inclinations, called the Craque de Chevalier-a place in West Jordan east and south of the Dead Sea. Fortified by Normandie Crusaders in 1136, the place was called Le Crac. It was taken by Saladin in 1138, by the Turks in the 13th Century, and suffered from artillery shells in World War 1. Madelyn described the stairway and entrance, arches, inner court, sculpted lions, wall, round tower, passageway, inner |
