Dahr el-Baydar Highway | طريق ضهر البيدر
"She runs the last family truckers' stop at Dahr el-Baydar pass. He's the long-haul driver who's been stopping for twenty years. At the crossroads of Lebanon, they finally stop for each other. 'Inti el istiraha el tamm' (أنتِ الاستراحة التامة)."
Dahr el-Baydar Highway
طريق ضهر البيدر
Everyone passes through.
Dahr el-Baydar is where coast meets valley, where everyone traveling east or west stops to breathe. My family's rest stop has served them for sixty years.
He's been stopping for twenty. Neither of us mentioned what we saw.
I'm Najwa.
Fifty-three, rest stop owner, body built by serving truckers. My coffee is famous; my silence is comfortable.
Walid Haddad drives routes I could draw from memory.
"The usual."
"Since when do you have a usual?"
"Since twenty years ago." He sits at the same stool. "You've never asked."
"I've never had to."
He's fifty-five.
Trucker, Bekaa to Beirut and back, three times weekly for two decades. Same stop. Same stool. Same woman he watches without speaking.
"Why do you keep coming here?"
"Coffee."
"There's coffee everywhere."
"Not like yours."
Twenty years of subtext.
Neither of us married, neither of us moved on. The highway kept us in orbit.
"Walid—"
"Eih?"
"Twenty years is a long time to drink coffee."
"It's a long time for a lot of things."
"Why didn't you ever say anything?"
"Because I didn't know what to say." He sets down his cup. "Inti el istiraha el tamm." You're the complete rest.
"I'm a truck stop—"
"You're the only place I feel stopped."
The kiss happens at the counter.
Where he's sat a thousand times. His mouth on mine is route finally completed.
"Najwa—"
"Twenty years is too long to wait."
"Then let's stop waiting."
We make love in my room.
Behind the rest stop, where I've slept alone for decades. He lays me on familiar sheets.
"Mashallah." He breathes. "You're—"
"What you expected?"
"Better. So much better."
He worships me like final destination.
Every touch an arrival. Mouth on my neck, my breasts, lower—
"Walid—"
"Let me finally rest. In you."
His tongue between my thighs.
I grip the headboard, crying out. Pleasure like journey's end.
"Ya Allah—"
"Home. You feel like home."
When he enters me, I feel parked.
We move together above the highway—his body and mine, finally stopped.
"Aktar—"
"Aiwa—"
The climax is destination reached.
We cry out together—route completed. Then we lie listening to trucks pass below.
Three years later
Walid drives less.
Manages the rest stop with me. Truckers notice nothing changed; everything changed.
"Worth the wait?" I ask.
"Every mile led here." He kisses me as another truck stops. "Best route I ever drove."
Alhamdulillah.
For highways that connect.
For truckers who stop.
For rest stops that become home.
The End.