Hamra Bookshop Blues | حزن مكتبة الحمرا
"She runs the last independent bookshop on Hamra Street. He's the poet who reads there every Thursday. Between pages, they write their own story. 'Kilmatak ahla min ay kteb' (كلماتك أحلى من أي كتاب)."
Hamra Bookshop Blues
حزن مكتبة الحمرا
Hamra isn't what it was.
The intellectuals fled, the cafés closed, the bookshops surrendered. Mine survives on stubbornness alone.
Then he starts reading every Thursday.
I'm Rima.
Forty-eight, thick with too many late nights and comfort food, guardian of twenty thousand books. My shop smells of paper and possibility.
Khalil Awad writes poetry no one buys.
"Fi mahal?"
"Back corner. Same as always." I don't look up from my inventory.
He settles in his chair like it's home. Pulls out a worn notebook. Writes.
I pretend not to watch.
He's fifty-two.
Once famous—Beirut's darling poet in the '90s. Now forgotten, teaching high school Arabic, writing verses no one reads.
Except me. I read everything.
"You leave poems in the margins."
He freezes mid-browse. "You noticed?"
"I notice everything in my shop." I hold up a Darwish volume. "This one has three of yours."
"Are they... any good?"
"Better than anything published this decade."
He cries.
Right there between Poetry and Philosophy. Fifty-two years old, weeping like a child.
"Khalil—"
"No one has said that in twenty years."
Thursdays become sacred.
He reads, writes, discusses. I listen, recommend, debate. The shop fills with our arguments—Adonis versus Darwish, classical versus contemporary.
"You're wasted running a bookshop," he says.
"You're wasted not publishing."
"Maybe we're both exactly where we should be."
One Thursday, he brings coffee.
Sets it on my counter like an offering. Watches me taste it.
"Kifak 'araft?" How did you know my order?
"I've watched you for six months." He doesn't look away. "I know everything about you."
"That's creepy."
"That's poetry." He steps closer. "You like your coffee sweet. You cry at Gibran. You laugh at Maalouf. You're lonely but pretend not to be."
"Stop."
"You're beautiful and no one tells you."
The kiss happens between Proust and Pessoa.
He backs me against the shelf, hands in my hair. I pull him close, desperate, starving.
"Khalil—"
"I've written a hundred poems about this moment."
"Show me."
He shows me.
After hours, doors locked, among the books that have witnessed everything. He lays me on the old Persian rug.
"Rima..." He kneels before me. "Kilmatak ahla min ay kteb."
"Then read me."
He reads me like poetry.
Slowly, deliberately, finding rhythm and meaning. His mouth on my neck, my collarbone, lower—
"Ya Allah—"
"Every verse," he murmurs against my breast. "I'll memorize every verse."
His tongue between my thighs.
A poet's precision, a poet's patience. I grip the rug, back arching.
"Khalil—please—"
"Not yet. The best poems build slowly."
He builds me.
Word by word, touch by touch, until I'm begging. Only then does he rise over me.
"Ready?"
"Since the first Thursday."
He enters me surrounded by words.
Darwish watches. Gibran witnesses. We write our own text on the oldest parchment—flesh on flesh.
"Rima—"
"Aktar—"
The climax is a couplet.
His cry, mine. Perfect rhyme. We collapse among the books, breathing hard.
"Publish that," I whisper.
"Some poetry is private." He kisses me. "But I'll write you forever."
Three years later
Khalil's collection sells out.
Critics call it his best. Readers don't know every poem is me—my body, my mind, my love.
"They don't need to know," he says.
"I know." I shelve his book, face out. "That's enough."
Alhamdulillah.
For bookshops that survive.
For poets who keep writing.
For readers who become the poem.
The End.