The Cedars of God (Arabic: أرز الربّ Arz al-Rabb “Cedars of God”), located in the Kadisha Valley of Bsharre, Lebanon, are one of the last vestiges of the extensive forests of the Lebanon cedar that anciently thrived across Mount Lebanon. In 1998, the Cedars of God were added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
The hotel owner, Désirée Sadek, forever adventure is preserving her country’s emblematic cedars. With her books Le Cèdre du Liban and L’Enfant des Cèdres, her aim is to sensitize readers to reforestation and to invest profits from the sales in planting cedars in the Lebanese mountains. In 2006, Dr Youssef Tawk, with whom she had been planting cedars for a decade, introduced her to Nabil Semmaan, who represented a Mexican patron of Lebanese origin, Alfredo Harb Helo. The number of living cedars around the ancient forest of Bsharri has since increased from 40,000 to 100,000, as in L’Enfant des Cèdres. To this day, this prophetic tale that started in a book and eventually became true in real life is her most beautiful story.