Ever since the earliest times people have been on
the look-out for short cuts, ways of avoiding long
journeys round. One has only to think of the cutting
of the Suez Canal or of the Panama Canal to find examples,
but of course there are many others. Later, on the
mainland galleries and tunnels were dug out like those
of moles to avoid circuitous or difficult routes.
Catacombs have long existed under such cities as Rome
and Paris. Quarries and mines were excavated to bring
out coal and minerals and to provide shelters and
cellars in whose cool depths food could be stored.
In the days of old, the armies of Greece and Rome
had to go long ways round in order to avoid roads
blocked by cliffs jutting out into the sea, whereas
in more modern times new technology has allowed passages
to be cut deep underground and even under the bed
of the sea.
Forty miles from the Lebanese capital Beirut under
the village of Hamat, just before Shekka, there is
a cliff soaring over the sea nearly three hundred
feet high and backed by a plateau. This bars the way
to anybody not wanting to turn far inland. Perched
above is the convent called Deir
Nouriyyeh, which with other nearby sites forms
a retreat where the visitor finds an atmosphere of
tranquility conducive to prayer.
To overcome this obstacle, in 1919 just after the
First World War, the Allies, more particularly the
French as friends of Lebanon, decided to pierce a
tunnel through the rock near the seashore in order
to make access and communication northwards much easier.
With the construction of the highway, access by road
was moved upwards and two one-way tunnels hewn out
side by side. The former tunnel has been restored
several times and there is a mushroom-shaped rock
near the entrance on which curious sightseer carve
out their names. From the point of view of communications,
this particular passageway is no longer of any great
importance.
There is another tunnel, one which was dug out at
the time of the Mutassarefs, the Administrators, who
ran the country during the latter part of the last
century of Ottoman Turkish occupation. It is well
worth a visit. It used to be used by carts and beasts
of burden and by anyone traveling north. It is interesting
and has a picturesque charm of its own. When anybody
says Shekka, it is of the tunnel that one first thinks,
but nowadays it would be more correct to think of
three tunnels.
Joseph Matar - Translation from the French:
Kenneth J. Mortimer
