Taxi excursion to Baalbek. A key-ring representing the Holy Virgin Mary, a magnetic Christ, a sheik in a locket on the dashboard give a finishing touch to the outfit of such a confessional bric a brac. We cross a country of loose stones, of over burnt grass, of broken glass and of thistles. Along the road, yellow dogs, car wrecks and the poor sheds made of sewn canvasses of the nomad shepherds from the Bekaa. In the Hotel Palmyra, time has stopped close to the temple of the sun where headless gods with broken fingers merely suggest the gesture of caressing the backs of chimeras buried among the rose trees.
Children play off ground tig on the sacrifice altar.
Grey-eyed young girls in jeans run among the marbles wearing a light scarf tied on their heads. Their shouts and laughs are heard when, perched on their stools, they pick white blackberries. The marbles of the Ancient Heliopolis superimpose to the still close rubble of the civil war. The same hollyhocks grow there next to the upside down skeleton columns among shell holes. They are the wildest and plainest flowers.