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J.D. Long-Garcia, managing editor of The Catholic Sun, reported on the Church’s work in the Middle East earlier this month. The Catholic Relief Services-sponsored trip brought seven journalists from around the United States to witness Catholic outreach in the region.

St. John the Baptist Church, Byblos, Lebanon.

Treating jet lag with sightseeing

Of all the material possessions a Lebanese person has, none is more important than his car. I learn that stereotype on Oct. 2, my first full day in the Middle East. Our travel companions from Catholic Relief Services arrange for a day of sightseeing so that we can recover from the 10-hour time change.

But it’s our tour guide who’s late. Archeologist Elie Leboss ends up meeting us near the Catholic Relief Services offices in Beirut. He drives a BMW.

“In Lebanon, you could not have running water or electricity, but you might still have a really nice car,” Leboss tells me that day. “It’s a symbol of status.”

Maybe a symbol, but not necessarily a true indicator. Leboss, who’s a Lebanese Indiana Jones/Joey Tribbiani (from “Friends”) hybrid, is wearing this cream-colored jump suit with white stripes on the side. Somehow it looks cool on him.

I’m sitting in the front of the bus, and he’s going back and forth with Vivian Manneh, our translator and guide, about whether he was late or whether we left the hotel early. That’s what I gather anyway. I’m busy looking out the window. In Beirut, Mosques are as common as gas stations. I search for Catholic churches as the bus plods along.

Leboss, who’s pretty serious with Manneh, grabs the bus microphone and puts on a big smile.

St. Charbel

“Who can tell me the name of the famous Lebanese saint?” Leboss asks. No one answers, so he tells us the story of the Maronite St. Charbel, who lived as a hermit from 1875 to his death, in 1898. Others came to St. Charbel asking for his blessing because he lived a life of utter holiness. St. Charbel was dedicated to the Eucharist and many healing miracles have been attributed to him after his death.

I’ve actually heard of St. Charbel before. There’s a Spanish-language bookstore in Phoenix with his name. I had a long conversation with the bookstore owners, and they told me all about it. (The story on the bookstore hasn’t been published but will eventually run in La Comunidad.)

Leboss also says that “Lebanon” is the oldest name for a country. He traces it back to the epic of Gilgamesh (2900 BC). Lebanon, or Libnén in Lebanese Arabic, comes from the Canaanite root “LBN,” which means white. Leboss suggests this refers to the snow-covered Mount Lebanon. He broke it down further: Lib means inside or white and nin means fertile. So the country means “white fertile,” which is a reference to the snow that melts on the mountains, which account for 50 percent of the country’s terrain. The water from the mountains makes the soil fertile.

Jeita Grotto

We arrive at the Jeita Grotto. It’s pretty impressive, but they don’t let you bring cameras. The photo here is from their Web site. What’s stays with me, though, is the Muslim tourists. I’d never been to a country that is predominately Muslim, and that in itself is eye-opening. At the grotto, I see women dressed in all black, with veils covering their faces — even their eyes. (I think this is called a Burka.) Only their hands were exposed. I see a couple women, who seem to be younger, playfully chasing each other around a statue outside the grotto.

The grotto is a popular site in the days after Ramadan. It’s home, according to Leboss, to the world’s longest stalactite, and it’s a candidate to be one of the new “seven wonders of the nature.”

On our way to the upper grotto, we pass through a large tunnel. Leboss tells us the tunnel was used to store weapons during the civil war (1975-1990).

Byblos

Byblos, the oldest, continually inhabited town in the world, is the next stop. The Bible gets its name from Byblos.

“The Phoenicians used to trade with Egypt. We used to have… ah, kind of a bartering,” Leboss says. “We used to get wheat, opium — we were a very happy people — perfumed oil, and beer — beer is very old (Did you know beer is from 3500 BC?) — and papyrus.”

Leboss then goes through a series of pronunciations of papyrus — babyrus, bybarus, byba — explaining it’s connection to Byblos and consequently to “Bible” — which shares the same root as bibliotec (French), bibliography, etc. It means book, more or less. Holy Bible = holy book.

Inside Crusaders Castle, Byblos, Lebanon

Leboss tells us this just outside the Crusaders Castle, which was built from Limestone in the 12th century. Leboss points out the different sizes of rocks, the larger ones on the bottom of the structure, which indicate that the crusaders built on top of a previously existing Roman structure.

On the way to lunch, which was after 2 p.m., I try talking to the bus driver. He doesn’t speak English, but is praying with his Muslim Holy Counting beads. On each bead — there are 99 — you name an attribute of God found in the Quran. I pull my rosary from my pocket and show the driver. He takes it and carefully untangles it and starts counting the beads. Well, he discovers, there aren’t 99. He gives the rosary back to me.

“Hmph,” he says.

Leboss, a Christian, comes over and explains what each of Muslim beads means. “But I’m sure he doesn’t know all 99 attributes,” he says. He asks the driver, who smiles. “How many do you know,” Leboss asks. The driver says seven, eight… He prays those over and over, “Allah the merciful,” “Allah the best judge,” that kind of thing.

At lunch we have hummus and tabole and baba ganoush , but we also eat these little fish. The servers set big plates with piles of these fish — heads and all — on the table, and the group members help themselves. After a while, I get the hang of it. It’d be great to have those fish at a baseball game — Lebanese fish, the sunflower seed alternative.

Some people complain about the fish having bones, which makes me think of my grandfather. He used to say that when your fish had bones you could tell it was the real thing.

On the drive back, I talk to Leboss about politics. He says that one of the important issues in Lebanon is religious representation. Religions have a certain number of representatives in parliament (this is a system of government called confessionalism). With the changing religious makeup of the country, some people want to do away with that, Leboss says. But he’s against that.

There hasn’t been a census taken in the country since 1932. That’s largely because of the religious sensitivities. Leboss estimated that Christians make up around 40 percent of the population.