From Here to Eternity. So there we were, out in the middle of the Beka’a... (Riyaq, Béqaa, Lebanon)
From Here to Eternity. So there we were, out in the middle of the Beka’a Valley. Back in the Mandate Era, Riyaq was a bustling town, home to a massive French airbase and our goal for the day, the sprawling depot and factory that was Lebanon’s main interchange with the region’s two main railway lines – the Hejaz Express down to Medina and the branch of the Orient Express that ran from Istanbul to Alexandria along the eastern Mediterranean coast. Today, the town is mostly Lebanese military and is rather over-looked by most visitors. We’d driven past the lovely old colonial buildings (thankfully still in pristine condition), to the depot (which is not) and found the entrance barred. Long-abandoned, the depot is a graveyard for old steam engines, which rust gracefully in the sun, some in the same place for so long, trees have grown through them. It’s off-limits without a permit but you can take a quick poke around, if the guards are feeling friendly. Why the public is kept away is hard to discern. The most likely reason is the depot’s ‘phantom workers’. Lebanon has no railway but it still has railway employees. It isn’t the only such case, so I’m not pointing fingers. As we roamed the ruins, I found myself thinking about Riyaq’s most famous son, Charles Elachi. As former director of NASA’s JPL, he oversaw the project that put Curiosity on Mars, back in 2012. Dr. Elachi grew up in Riyaq, where he fell in love with the night sky and first caught the space bug when Sputnik was launched. He told me once that he would listen to the Russian satellite as it passed overhead, every night. Dr. Elachi is now an American citizen but he makes regular visits to Lebanon. Whether those include Riyaq, I could not say for sure.
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