Bhamdoun Pianist's Return | عودة عازفة بحمدون
"She returns to her bombed family home in Bhamdoun after forty years. He's the contractor hired to rebuild it. In the ruins of memory, they construct something new. 'Inti el beit el jdid' (أنتِ البيت الجديد)."
Bhamdoun Pianist's Return
عودة عازفة بحمدون
Memory has ruins.
My family's villa in Bhamdoun was destroyed in '83. I haven't returned in forty years. Now I'm back to rebuild.
The contractor doesn't understand why I cry at rubble.
I'm Jacqueline.
Fifty-eight, concert pianist in Paris for decades, body softened by French living. The war took my home; time took everything else.
Ghassan Matar builds what others destroy.
"The structure is salvageable."
"It's more than structure." I touch a scorched wall. "My mother's piano was here."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know—"
"How could you? I didn't hire you for empathy."
He's fifty-five.
Post-war contractor, rebuilt half of Lebanon. His hands know reconstruction; his eyes show curiosity.
"Why rebuild now?"
"Because I'm running out of time to come home."
"Paris isn't home?"
"Paris is escape. This is home. Even destroyed."
He works differently after that.
Preserves what can be preserved. Asks about original details. Treats rubble like artifacts.
"You don't have to—"
"This matters to you. That makes it matter to me."
"Why?"
"Because I've rebuilt buildings. Never seen someone rebuild themselves."
I play for him.
An upright he brings from town. Evening concerts on construction rubble. Bach in bombed rooms.
"Why piano?"
"Because it survived. My mother taught me here. Music saved me."
"Now you're saving the house."
"We're saving each other."
The kiss happens in the restored music room.
Where my mother's piano once stood, where mine will soon. His hands—construction-calloused—cup my face.
"Jacqueline—"
"I didn't expect this—"
"Neither did I. Inti el beit el jdid."
"The new home?"
"Everything I've built and never found myself."
We make love in the half-built house.
My home becoming ours. He lays me on fresh flooring.
"Mashallah." He breathes. "You're—"
"Old. Soft. Away too long—"
"Coming home. Beautifully."
He worships me constructively.
Building pleasure methodically. Mouth on my neck, my breasts, lower—
"Ghassan—"
"Let me rebuild you too."
His tongue between my thighs.
I grip raw wood beams, crying out in my mother's music room. Pleasure rising from ruins.
"Ya Allah—"
"That's it. Come home."
When he enters me, I feel reconstructed.
We move together in the rebuilding house—his body and mine, making new memory.
"Aktar—"
"Aiwa—"
The climax is completion.
We cry out together—house and hearts, finished and beginning. Then we lie on floors that will hold decades more.
Two years later
The villa reopens.
Music room with a new grand piano. Ghassan's work, my life, our home.
"Worth returning?" he asks.
"I found more than a house." I play the opening of a waltz. "Found what I left forty years ago."
Alhamdulillah.
For ruins that wait.
For contractors who understand.
For pianists who come home.
The End.