‘Die slowly, Christian dog’

There is one main road stretching north-south along the Bekaa valley between Lebanon and Syria. It runs in a beeline from the prosperous little city of Zhaleh, on through a series of villages each with its own religious bent — some Sunni, some Christian — to the border town of al-Qaa, then on into Homs and the bloody mess of the Syrian war.

We’re just short of the border when what has been an uninspiring landscape, a wafting sea of plastic bags caught on desert shrubs, springs suddenly to life. Out of nowhere: orchards, vineyards, fig trees; aubergines fat and fallen on the grass. The air is sweet with the smell of apples.

Dr Bassam El-Hachem, professor of sociology at the Lebanese university in Beirut and a big hitter in Lebanon’s FPM party, is our tour guide today on this jaunt to visit Christian refugees. He leans over his shoulder, to address the minibus (one priest, two hacks and the Doc’s flamboyant blonde wife).