Monastery of the Moon

Traces of a lost stonecutters' art

This poetic title is the translation of the name of an actual place, the town of Deir el-Qamar¹ in the Chouf region of Lebanon. No matter how far I travel and how much I see, Deir el-Qamar remains one of the most lovely places I know. For reasons too far-reaching to go into, the Chouf as a whole has been preserved from rampant urbanisation, and the trad…