Bikfaya Apricot Season | موسم مشمش بكفيا
"She makes Lebanese preserves from Bikfaya's famous apricots. He's the food importer who wants to take her jams global. Between orchards and ambition, they find their own sweetness. 'Inti ahla min el mishmish' (أنتِ أحلى من المشمش)."
Bikfaya Apricot Season
موسم مشمش بكفيا
Apricot season waits for no one.
Three weeks of perfect fruit, then gone. I've made preserves from Bikfaya apricots for thirty years—the best in Lebanon.
Then the importer arrives, wanting more than jars.
I'm Jeanette.
Forty-six, preserve-maker, built by years of tasting and perfecting. My kitchen produces twelve hundred jars a season. That's all.
Antoine Gebara wants thousands.
"I can't scale."
"You could with investment."
"Scale destroys quality. My grandmother taught me that."
"Your grandmother didn't have access to international markets."
He's forty-eight.
Food importer, Lebanese products for diaspora. His business model requires volume I won't provide.
"Why twelve hundred exactly?"
"Because that's what I can make perfectly."
"What about profit?"
"What about integrity?"
He stays for the season.
Learns my process—the specific cultivar, the sugar ratio, the copper pots. His respect grows as his frustration fades.
"You're an artist."
"I'm a craftsperson."
"Same thing."
"No. Artists work alone. I work with trees."
He helps with harvest.
Business suits replaced by orchard clothes. His hands stain orange; his perspective shifts.
"I've spent my career selling product. This is... different."
"This is relationship."
"With trees?"
"With everything. Including you."
The admission surprises both of us.
"Jeanette—"
"I know. Unprofessional."
"Everything meaningful is." He steps closer. "Inti ahla min el mishmish."
"Sweeter than apricots?"
"Sweeter than anything I've tasted."
The kiss happens in the orchard.
Among trees that have fruited for generations. His mouth on mine tastes like apricots.
"Antoine—"
"I'm not here for your preserves anymore."
We make love under apricot trees.
Where my grandmother picked, where my mother taught me. He lays me on harvest cloths.
"Mashallah." He breathes. "You're—"
"Large. Sticky. Fruit-stained—"
"Ripe. Perfectly ripe."
He worships me like precious fruit.
Carefully, thoroughly. Mouth on my neck, my breasts, lower—
"Antoine—"
"Let me taste all of you."
His tongue between my thighs.
I grip tree roots, crying out in the orchard. Pleasure like perfect fruit—sweet, brief, intense.
"Ya Allah—"
"Delicious. You're delicious."
When he enters me, I feel preserved.
We move together among apricot trees—his body and mine, sweetness concentrated.
"Aktar—"
"Aiwa—"
The climax is perfect preserve.
We cry out together—everything concentrated to essence. Then we lie under trees, satisfied.
Three years later
We export selectively.
His connections, my quality. Twelve hundred jars still, to carefully chosen stores.
"Worth the compromise?" I ask.
"I found something better than volume." He kisses me in the orchard. "Found you."
Alhamdulillah.
For apricots that brief.
For importers who learn.
For preserves that sweeten life.
The End.