Ziad al-Maamari grew up helping his father build a castle. In the beginning, the “castle” was a one-story stone building where the family lived in two rooms. But year by year, it grew. Today, Moussa Castle, named for Ziad’s father, Moussa al-Maamari, is a 3,500-square-meter stone fortress with fairy-tale turrets.
The castle in the Chouf has become one of Lebanon’s most beloved tourist destinations.
Moussa, the castle’s mastermind and builder, died last year at age 87, but his surviving family members - his wife, Marie, along with Ziad and his three siblings - are carrying on.
The castle was teeming Wednesday with a constant flow of visitors: tour groups of Lebanese, Polish and Egyptian tourists as well as individual families. The site now sees thousands of visitors a week, Ziad said, and is still a work in progress. The family hopes to continue developing the exhibits inside, and is planning to add a restaurant.
“The work hasn’t stopped and will not stop because we are continuing in it,” Ziad said.
“The work will continue, God willing, and we will also teach our children in the future so they can continue with this project.”
Inside, the castle contains some 160 handcrafted clay statues depicting moments in traditional Lebanese village life - women grinding wheat, men dancing dabke - and religious scenes from different confessions: the Christian Nativity and Last Supper, a sheikh reading from the Quran.
On the bottom floor, a classroom tableau shows a teacher beating a student with a stick. A torn drawing of a castle, pieced together again, is on display. The scene represents the castle’s origin story.
The story has become family lore. In the 1940s, 14-year-old Moussa, who had been born in the Syrian village of Harat al-Saraya but was then living in Tartous, where his father was stationed with the French army at the tail end of the French mandate, became infatuated with the daughter of a wealthy neighbor. But the girl snubbed him, telling him he could speak to her when he had a palace like her father’s, Ziad said.
In 1945, after dreaming that he owned a castle, 15-year-old Moussa drew the fortress he had imagined in art class the next day, instead of the bird on a tree that the teacher had asked for. The teacher hit him for failing to follow instructions and ripped up the drawing. Moussa gathered the pieces and told the teacher, “This thing that you ripped up, one day I will show it to you in reality,” Ziad said.
Moussa never entered the classroom again. Instead, he ran away from home and set out for Sidon, where his uncle was working on the restoration of the seaside Crusader castle. He had just enough money to take the bus from Tartous to Tripoli, Ziad said.
From there, Moussa made his way as far as Damour by “stealing places” on buses, exiting each time the conductor came to collect the fare and discovered he had no money. The final stage of the journey, from Damour to Sidon, he walked.
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At last Moussa arrived, much to the surprise of his uncle, and announced that he wanted to learn the restoration trade. After some resistance, his uncle allowed him to stay. Later, he worked in antiquities restoration in the National Museum of Beirut and at Beiteddine Palace. Following his move to Lebanon, he was naturalized as a citizen.
Apart from the restoration work, Moussa took on odd jobs to save money to buy a plot of land. In 1963, he got married and, with his wife’s help, finally began to build his own castle on a plot of land near Deir al-Qamar.
“I didn’t ask about wealth or if he had money - I didn’t ask about any of that,” his wife, Marie al-Maamari, added. When they met, Moussa was living in Deir al-Qamar, where Marie was from, and the couple got to know each other while putting on theater performances of Biblical-themed plays, she said. “I loved him, that’s it. I loved him and I walked with him.”
When they first got married, she said, Moussa told her the story of his dream to build a castle, which she said she would support.
Marie said the fact that the dream had been sparked by his early infatuation with another girl never bothered her. “We began working, stone by stone by stone, and then we made the first floor before this castle was completed,” she said. “We made two rooms and lived there in those two rooms in the bottom floor, on the earth. There wasn’t electricity or water or anything. ... But I was very happy, because I felt [Moussa] was not a normal person like all the others - he was a creator.”
Even before the castle’s completion, tourists began showing up, intrigued by the project, Marie recalled. The couple began charging a quarter of a lira for entrance, and with this income, they were able to continue with the work.
As the children were born and grew old enough to help, they, too, became part of the project. “He was keen on this, to let us stay with him to learn how to make everything, from carving the stones to making the statues inside, so that the journey would continue after him,” Ziad said.
Among the visitors who came to see the castle after its completion was the girl whose ridicule provided the original inspiration. In the early 1980s, Moussa decided to invite his former teacher and his schoolboy crush to see that the dream had been realized. The teacher had died by that time, but the girl, now a woman, came. She was greeted by Moussa and Marie, who gave her a tour of the castle. “It was a very moving moment,” recalled Ziad, who was present for the visit. “My father’s tears were flowing, and the girl’s, and also my mother’s.”
Although Moussa had made a small door to the palace for the express purpose of inviting his former teacher and crush, Ziad said the intent of the invitation was not to humiliate them or to seek an apology. Rather, he said, his father wanted to show them that a poor boy could grow up to accomplish great things.
“‘Poverty is not something shameful. ... This was the message he wanted to send her, only,” Ziad said. “‘You said I was poor - I will show you that poverty is poverty of the mind, not financial poverty.’”
This article has been adapted from its original source.
