Traveling from Beirut to Damascus
Early August 1977
Six Years after King Solomon's Gate
Sometimes you do stupid things in life. Sometimes you try to do stupid things in life and a backdoor backhanded twist of fate saves you from your stupidity. From my experience, for a westerner to spend too many years immersed in a strictly Buddhist far far far eastern culture particularly in and around a Thai civil war, on the edges of the Cambodia Killing fields, strengthens the tendency to do stupid things in life. The old salts always said "Life is cheap in Asia", what they left unsaid was that extends to your view of your own life as well. Crazy risks become the order of the day, Moonscaped as the Peace Corps Volunteers termed it or just a complete flight of all common sense, too many years in Asia becomes a state of mind. How long it takes just depends on you.
When they handed me the ticket home after the Refugee Evacuation I took one look at and and said out loud "I'm not ready for this". I decided to cash it in and slowly reintegrate myself into western culture by going overland to Europe instead and arrived in Barcelona Christmas day 1976. Eventually, the following spring I started to work as a Driver for Iranian entrepreneurs driving new cars from Munich to Iran and eventually a truck for the Syrian army to Beruit
.....fleeing from Beruit......
I climbed out of the cheroot just outside of Damascus and fell to the roadway as it took off. Things had started to get really bad. Projectile vomiting, uncontrollable diarrhea, severe dehydration, unable hold water down, extreme fever, and severely blurred vision that made all but the general landscape unrecognizable... I was at times unable to stand, falling and getting up repeatedly. I was broke, sick, without any goods except the clothes on my back and my passport as I began to try to hitchhike my way out of Syria.
Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" And he said, "Who are you, Lord?" And he said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
The Holy Bible Acts 3-9
This is one of the Thirty Three incredible stories surrounding the discovery of
King Solomon's
Gate
The first Archaeological Proof of the Bible in history