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Fri 05 May 2010Village life destroyed by war gets paltry boost from weekenders
Homes bombarded in the civil war now draw wealthy visitors seeking respite from Beirut heat
AS THE sun sinks below the molten silver slab of the Mediterranean, Shemlan is suffused with gold and green. The soft light plays on the white stone walls and red tile roofs of the village. Shemlan is 1,000 years old. Many of the venerable olive trees on the slope below the house we built in 1968 are twice that. Our house was the first to be built within the village for a century and the first ever by foreigners.
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