Anjar Ruins Romance | غرام أطلال عنجر
"She gives tours of Anjar's Umayyad ruins by day. He's the Armenian architect documenting the site. Among stones that bridge Arab and Armenian heritage, they build something new. 'Inti tarthi li' (أنتِ ترثي لي)."
Anjar Ruins Romance
غرام أطلال عنجر
Anjar is complicated.
Umayyad palace in an Armenian town. Two histories sharing one valley. I've explained this contradiction for twenty years.
Then he arrives, understanding both.
I'm Aline.
Forty-eight, Armenian-Lebanese, shaped by two cultures and excellent food. The ruins are my living; the complexity is my inheritance.
Hagop Berberian sees what others miss.
"The arcade design—"
"Umayyad innovation, yes." I wait for him to interrupt.
"But the stone masonry is local. Bekaa technique." He touches a column. "Two cultures already, before your people arrived."
I blink. No tourist has ever noticed.
He's fifty-two.
Lebanese-Armenian, studied in Yerevan, returned to document what his grandparents escaped to. His understanding of survival matches mine.
"Why these ruins?"
"Because they're ours. All of them." He sketches rapidly. "Arab and Armenian. Claiming either alone is a lie."
He stays for months.
Measuring, documenting, drawing. I continue my tours, but they change—his insights filter into my narratives.
"You're stealing my research," he jokes.
"I'm sharing it."
"Same thing, with better delivery."
One evening, we walk the ruins alone.
Sunset gilding Umayyad arches, Armenian mountains beyond. Two histories, one moment.
"Aline—"
"Eih, Hagop?"
"I came here to document stones. I found something more interesting."
"Shu?"
"Someone who understands that heritage isn't simple." He stops walking. "Someone who carries complications beautifully."
"I'm too old for poetry—"
"You're exactly the right age for truth."
The kiss happens between palace walls.
Where Umayyad caliphs walked, where Armenian refugees rebuilt. His hands find my waist.
"Is this—"
"Appropriate?" I half-smile. "Nothing about us is appropriate. Everything about us makes sense."
We make love in the ancient bathhouse.
Where two cultures' water once mixed. He lays me on stones smoothed by centuries.
"Mashallah." He breathes. "Inti tarthi li."
"Your heritage?"
"Everything I came here to find."
He worships my Armenian curves.
Mouth on my breasts, my belly, the thickness my grandmother would have approved. I grip Roman-Umayyad stone.
"Hagop—"
"Let me learn you like I've learned these ruins. Every layer."
His tongue finds my center.
I gasp at the evening sky, at arches that have seen everything. Pleasure builds like history—layer upon layer.
"Please—"
"Not yet. I'm still excavating."
When he finally enters me, I feel bridges building.
Between past and present, between peoples, between two bodies carrying complicated histories.
"Aktar—"
"Aiwa—"
The climax is its own monument.
We cry out together—Arabic and Armenian, ancestors probably disapproving, ourselves wholly free.
Three years later
Hagop's documentation is published.
The definitive study of Anjar—with credits to the guide who taught him to see. We married in the ruins, naturally.
"Arab ceremony or Armenian?" his mother asked.
"Both," we said. "Li'anno nhna tnayn."
Alhamdulillah.
For ruins that welcome all heritages.
For architects who see clearly.
For guides who become partners in history.
The End.