Buarij: Portrait of a Lebanese Muslim village
The village world
Water is a source of life.. Where springs break from the Lebanese mountains there is human habitation. Water is a source of power, feeding and nourishing the soil. Sprites and spirits inhabit sources of water since living water issuing from the hidden regions of the earth is both mysterious and semi-sacrosanct; mysterious because of its subterranean origins, semi-sacrosanct because of its primal relationship to the sustaining of all life.
On the eastern slopes of the Lebanon Mountains, which run parallel to the Mediterranean Sea and form a distinguishing mark of the country, from the steep slopes of Mt. Knisseh at an altitude of four thousand feet, breaks a spring of water, neba asal, or "spring of honey" so called because of the sweetness and freshness of its flow. Lesser springs lie near it. Close to the waters is an Arab Muslim village, its nearer fields and stand of poplars fed by diverted streams. Here high on the eastern mountain slope, facing the interior of the country, a peasant people have their home and gain a living from the soil.
The spring waters flow downward to the plain, a thousand feet below, or to that elevated tableland, the Beqaa, which divides the Lebanon mountains from the more easterly and parallel Anti - Lebanon range. It is this stretch of territory of downward mountain slope, of width of plain, and face of further mountain range that village houses overlook. The village itself is the highest settlement on the mountain side. It forms the apex of a watered triangle which becomes more populated as the foothills and region... | 
