I went all the way to Lebanon and all I got was this lousy conjunctivitis.

The Bekaa Valley, straddling the border with Syria, is my last stop before saying a sad goodbye to Lebanon. It’s a curious place, the Bekaa: home to the ancient “Sun City” of the Romans, Baalbek - arguably Lebanon’s top tourist attraction - it’s also the birthplace of Hizbollah - arguably the biggest pain in the Lebanese government’s rump. On your way into town, passing splashy billboards for hotels and local restaurants, you also pass sobering tributes to the martyrs of last year’s war. Their somber young faces, covered in scraggily bears or trim moustaches, stare gravely at the passing cars. There are billboards paying homage to the resistance: elegiac portraits of men carrying automatic rifles or rocket launchers, the flaming carcass of an Israeli tank looming in the background.

And Nasrallah, the group’s spiritual leader: he beams down from billboards and wall posters and little keychains dangling in shop windows. His bright, bespectacled eyes mild and benevolent; his salt-and-pepper beard like a nesting place where little chickadees might come for protection on a stormy night. How can such an avuncular old guy - the graying tufts of hair poking out from beneath his turban - sling such fire and brimstone across the border? You can picture him bouncing the neighbor’s kids on his lap, offering sweets when their parents aren’t looking, or pulling shiny coins from behind their ears.

There’s an odd banality to these ostentatious displays: the massive painting over the door to a mosque; the Nasrallah 8x10’s in the rear window of an old Pontiac; the portrait hanging beside a wall clock in a cluttered dry goods store. Outside the entrance to the ruins, a weathered old man with a ruddy, pockmarked face is trying to sell some souvenirs. He holds up a booklet of cheap postcards and some plastic worry beads. Then he unfolds a few bright yellow Hizbollah t-shirts from a plastic bag.

“Seven thousand,” he offers - about five American bucks - then adds, “it’s a very good price.”

I explain that should they take the time to go through my bags a few months down the line, American immigration would be none too pleased to see a Hizbollah shirt among the Moroccan jewelry boxes and bootleg DVDs. Not to mention the fact that, in a not-so-round-about way, buying one of these admittedly snazzy tees would be giving material support to terrorists.

I won’t even get into the problems I’d run into on my way to Jerusalem.

Undeterred, he turns the shirt once, twice in the light, holding it up to his chin to show how it might look draped across the right chest. “I have them in black, too,” he says, digging into his bag. I tell him I’ll think it over, and he offers to take my picture in front of a few crumbling columns before I manage to shake myself free.

You have to feel for the touts around town. Since the summer’s war scared off most of Lebanon’s tourists, Baalbek - perhaps the finest Roman ruins this side of, well, Rome - has been all but deserted. There’s just an older French couple tramping around the site when I show up; later, three young Germans will arrive - squinting into the afternoon sun, posing in front of the temples, and doing a good job of ruining a certain writer’s meditative mood.

Still, it’s the sort of day made for postcards: the blue sky broken by a few puffs of clouds, the wind whispering through the overgrown grass. If I have to leave this country behind, there are certainly worse ways to do it. Sunlight is piercing the ruins and the swallows are chattering in the trees and I feel the sort of soaring joy the Romans must’ve felt when they woke up to see the sun galloping over the horizon. On the walls of the Temple of Venus are scribbled names from generations of visitors: Michel Alouf (1886) and Joseph Constantin Naggiar (1880) and countless others written in an elegant Arabic script. So it goes in Lebanon, where the foreigners are endlessly parading through, leaving their mark - sometimes harmless; often not - and then setting off in search of new lands to pillage.

In a falafel shop in town I meet a bunch of guys passing a lazy afternoon. Business is slow - more grumblings about the cost of war - and I get the feeling I’m the first guy to pass through the door today who wasn’t somehow related to the owner. The electricity flickers on and off while we talk about America: one of the guys lived in New York for four years in the ‘80s; another has cousins in Detroit and Phoenix; a third, a sweet young kid who speaks quick, agitated English, is hoping to go to graduate school in the States. He’s applied for the green card lottery through a website that charged an exorbitant price, and he wonders if I can make some inquiries (“call your friends in New York”) to find out if the company’s legit.

On my way back to the hotel I pop into a souvenir shop, where I’ve had some pleasant exchanges with a young employee. The boss is behind the counter - a tall, stocky guy in a checkered shirt - and after a quick Q&A we find out what a small world this is: his cousin Jihad once owned a sandwich shop that was a local institution in my Vermont college town, and Ahmed himself spent a few years slinging schwarma to students - perhaps a certain soon-to-be scribe among them.

It’s a fine coda to my time in Lebanon, though my last impression is hardly my best. As a parting gift, the country so famous for its generosity is kind enough to give me an eye infection before I break for the border. I spend a long day shielding my eyes from the sunlight and wiping tears from my cheeks. Though I expected to bid this country a tearful farewell, it’s hardly what I had in mind.

The next morning, I get some eyedrops from a pharmacist who assures me they’ll sort me out before the day is through. I’m waiting in the shade outside my hotel, squinting up the brightly lit street for the minibus that will take me to Syria. An old taxi driver offers to take me to the border for an extravagant price, and when I politely decline, he flags down a passing minibus, negotiates with the driver, and then hauls my bags into the back with a cheerful “massalama” before sending us on our way.

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