Bourj Hammoud Colors | ألوان برج حمود
"She runs a textile shop in Bourj Hammoud, last keeper of Armenian weaving traditions. He's the fashion designer seeking authentic fabrics. In threads of heritage, they weave something new. 'Inti ahla nashij' (أنتِ أحلى نسيج)."
Bourj Hammoud Colors
ألوان برج حمود
The looms have been silent for years.
My mother's, her mother's—I sell what remains of their work. The art of Armenian weaving dies with the unsold.
Then the designer arrives, wanting what's dead.
I'm Lucine.
Fifty-three, Armenian-Lebanese, hands that remember patterns my mind has forgotten. My shop in Bourj Hammoud holds ghosts.
André Nasrallah designs for runways I'll never walk.
"I want these patterns."
"They're not for sale."
"Everything has a price—"
"Not heritage." I fold the textile. "These were my grandmother's. Made during the genocide. Irreplaceable."
He stops.
Actually stops, reconsiders. Most designers just keep pushing.
"I'm sorry. I didn't—"
"You didn't know. No one knows." I gesture at the shop. "These aren't products. They're survival."
He's fifty-one.
Lebanese, Paris-trained, desperate to create something meaningful. His career has been successful and empty.
"Then teach me."
"Teach you what?"
"Why they matter. How they were made. I'll pay for education, not acquisition."
An unusual request.
I agree. Over weeks, I teach him—the history, the techniques, the stories woven into threads.
"Each pattern means something?"
"Everything means something. We just forgot how to read it."
He learns to read.
More than patterns—me. Watching how I handle the textiles, how I speak about the dead who made them.
"Lucine—"
"Eih?"
"You're the last thread. When you go—"
"It all goes. I know."
"Then let me help preserve it. Differently."
"How?"
"A collection. Inspired by, not appropriating. Credits, education, percentage to Armenian causes."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then at least I'll have learned something real."
The kiss happens amid textiles.
Surrounded by survival, by hands that held looms while fleeing death. His mouth on mine is question and answer.
"André—"
"I see you," he says. "Not just the heritage. You."
"Inti ahla nashij," I whisper. You're the most beautiful weave.
"What?"
"Something my grandmother said. When things fit."
We make love in the back room.
On textiles too damaged to sell but too precious to discard. He undresses me like unwrapping history.
"Mashallah." He breathes against my skin. "You're—"
"Old. Heavy. Like my textiles—"
"Priceless."
He worships me like art.
His hands tracing patterns my body holds. Mouth on my neck, my breasts, lower—
"André—"
"Let me learn you. Every thread."
His tongue weaves between my thighs.
I grip bolts of silk my grandmother made during displacement. Pleasure and grief, inseparable.
"Ya Allah—"
"Tell me what you need."
"You. This. Something new from something old."
When he enters me, generations witness.
We move together, weaving our own pattern. His body with mine, present from past.
"Aktar—"
"Aiwa—"
The climax is a completed work.
We cry out together—something new, something continuous. The textiles approve, I think. They always wanted to be touched.
Two years later
"Survival" debuts in Paris.
André's collection, inspired by Armenian weaving, credited to me. Proceeds fund a textile school in Bourj Hammoud.
"Worth the collaboration?" he asks.
"Worth everything." I touch our new patterns. "The looms aren't silent anymore."
Alhamdulillah.
For textiles that remember.
For designers who listen.
For weavers who find new threads.
The End.