The adaptation of Bizet’s opera “Carmen” at the Baalbeck Festival 2025. (Credit: Mohamed Yassin/L’Orient Le Jour)
Crossing the Bekaa plain, your heart racing, as if it were the first time. Taking the road back to Baalbeck. Thinking that just a few days ago, this felt almost impossible. Rediscovering, at this late summer afternoon, that same unassailable light. Untouched. The kind that runs across the fields and traces the outlines of mountains in the sky. The light that caresses and envelops the landscape in a texture resembling gold. Finding Baalbeck again. Returning to the Palmyra Hotel, spared by some miracle from an Israeli bombardment just across the street last November. Finding its infinitely poetic terrace, unveiling a view of the temples of Bacchus and Jupiter, linked at sunset by pink hues found nowhere else. Watching crowds flocking toward the ruins. Thinking that only a few months ago, this all seemed unthinkable. Impossible. On Friday...
Crossing the Bekaa plain, your heart racing, as if it were the first time. Taking the road back to Baalbeck. Thinking that just a few days ago, this felt almost impossible. Rediscovering, at this late summer afternoon, that same unassailable light. Untouched. The kind that runs across the fields and traces the outlines of mountains in the sky. The light that caresses and envelops the landscape in a texture resembling gold. Finding Baalbeck again. Returning to the Palmyra Hotel, spared by some miracle from an Israeli bombardment just across the street last November. Finding its infinitely poetic terrace, unveiling a view of the temples of Bacchus and Jupiter, linked at sunset by pink hues found nowhere else. Watching crowds flocking toward the ruins. Thinking that only a few months ago, this all seemed unthinkable. Impossible. On Friday...
Hacking Lebanese Politics #36: Is Lebanon about to abolish the death penalty?