Peace

Beirut, Lebanon, 1963

The Brink of Peace

Thomas R. Morin

It was late morning on warm August day In Beirut Lebanon. Ed and I were the only ones on the Street of The Mosques. We were just sailors in our dress whites and spit shined shoes with a tour brochure. We had a deep curiosity, a deep reverence and a burning desire to feel the essence of these ancient places.

The stones that paved this Beirut street two thousand years ago have surrendered to time and melded with the stones that wall these wombs of prayer, the mosques. These stones have heard the call to prayer recited five times a day for nearly two millennium. In the late morning and evening shadows they have witnessed nearly three million prayers. These stones have heard joyous praise, gratitude and wailings of grief. In this stillness I could feel the essence of old ways.

"There are certain cautions the newcomer must observe," the brochure warns.

'There are transgressions, seemingly innocent enough to us westerners, that are capitol offenses. Photographing a veiled woman, for instance, is one such offense."

Half-way down the street there is a slight bend. Rounding that bend there is a beautifully manicured park, pleasantly shaded by the magnificent Cedars of Lebanon that Kahlil Gilbran and Solomon praised with pen so eloquently in their time. It is an excellent background for photographs and I am eager to try my new camera. My duty free cost was ten dollars. At a camera shop in Beirut it is eighty-five dollars.

Two Mutaween appear and motion for us to stop. They are robed and carrying sabers. They are the police. We learn that there are veiled woman in the pictures that I

have taken.

“Allahu Akbar!” The call to noon prayer fills this empty street. Those who are too old, those working in the olive groves or other remote places will hear the call and kneel.

The clear ringing voice of the Muezzin calling for the remembrance of Allah brings me into timelessness. It awakens a transcendent moment where the boundaries between the gross and the subtle become fuzzy.

The Mutaween asks us to wait. They cross the street and enter the mosque.

“Allahu Akbar!” the first words of the call resound from mosques down the street, each Muezzin beginning a few seconds following the previous beginning. It is a sound that has been reverberating within the universal consciousness for many since the Prophet came with his message of compassion and forgiveness. The street floods with the devout, swiftly and silently making their way to noon devotions. Then sudden stillness. Quietude. Ed and I wait. Curiously, there is no sense of fear, no thought of making a bee line to the ship.

The streets fill once again as worshipers silently return to their daily activities. The Mutaween return. They seem surprised that we are still there. We begin again, crossing the language barrier. Giving them the film from my camera will be sufficient atonement.

There is an atmosphere of deep peace in this encounter. I am deeply moved by the absence of anything threatening and I offer them my camera, insist that they take it, that I really want to do this.

They take the camera and ask me to wait. They return again to the mosque.

They come back with my camera. Just the film will suffice. They offered me the camera and I declined. I insisted that was the least I could do in exchange for my recklessness. The silence that followed gave space for one of the most profound non verbal exchanges I have ever encountered. For an infinite moment there was nothing save a deep pool of nostalgia as we looked through each others eyes and crossed the veil into the ultimate reality of our oneness.

© Thomas R. Morin, April 2011, 2013