Raouche Rocks | صخرة الروشة
"She's the marine biologist studying tidal pools at Raouche. He's the photographer who keeps showing up at dawn. Between rock and sea, they find something worth capturing. 'Inti ajmal min ay soura' (أنتِ أجمل من أي صورة)."
Raouche Rocks
صخرة الروشة
The tidal pools keep secrets.
Life cycles in miniature—birth, death, adaptation. I've studied them beneath Raouche's famous arches for fifteen years.
Then his camera starts pointing at me.
I'm Dr. Lara Nassar.
Forty-six, built for swimming, too thick for fashion but perfect for fieldwork. My research on Mediterranean ecosystems could save these waters.
Bassam Youssef thinks I'm more interesting than the rocks.
"You're in my frame."
"Your frame is my research site." I don't look up from my samples. "Move."
"The light here is perfect—"
"So is my data collection."
He moves. He also returns.
Every dawn, camera ready, photographing rocks he claims to love. But his lens keeps drifting toward me.
"Why do you keep coming?"
"The light changes."
"It's been the same for fifteen years."
"Then maybe I'm not here for the light."
He's fifty-one.
War photographer, retired after too many bodies, now shooting landscapes. His eyes carry weight I recognize—the cost of witnessing.
"Why Raouche?"
"It doesn't die." He photographs a hermit crab. "Everything I shot before—death. Here, life."
"Life is also brutal."
"But it continues. That matters."
We develop a rhythm.
He arrives at dawn; I'm already working. He photographs; I research. We share coffee from his thermos, silence between us.
"What are you looking for?" he asks one morning.
"Evidence that these ecosystems can survive us."
"Can they?"
"I don't know yet."
One dawn, he shows me his photos.
Not rocks—me. Working, concentrating, laughing at something I don't remember. Hands wet, hair wild, completely unguarded.
"Bassam—"
"You're the most alive thing I've photographed in years."
"I look—"
"Real." He cuts off my objection. "Inti ajmal min ay soura."
"That's—"
"True."
The kiss happens at low tide.
Salt spray on our lips, sunrise blazing the arch golden. His camera hangs forgotten as his hands find my waist.
"Lara—"
"Don't photograph this."
"Never. Some things are just for living."
We make love in a sea cave.
Beneath Raouche's arch, where tidal pools hold entire worlds. He lays me on smoothed stone, reverent.
"Mashallah." He traces my curves. "You're like the sea."
"Old? Salty?"
"Vast. Powerful. Worth drowning in."
His mouth explores like tide pools.
Every curve a discovery. When his tongue finds my center, I grip stone and cry at the arch above.
"Bassam—"
"Let me see you come undone. For once, not captured—just witnessed."
The orgasm crashes like waves.
I cry out, echoing off ancient rock. He rises, enters me slowly.
"Okay?"
"More than okay. Perfect."
We move with tidal rhythm.
In and out, building and retreating. The Mediterranean whispers through the arch.
"Ana jayyi—"
"Ma'aya—"
We crest together.
Two people who've spent lives observing, finally participating. The cave holds our sounds, releases them to the sea.
Four years later
My research is published.
Bassam's photographs illustrate it—the ecosystems, the threats, the hope. But one photo is private: me, working, alive.
"Worth giving up war photography?" I ask.
"I stopped photographing death." He pulls me close. "Now I document life. Starting with ours."
Alhamdulillah.
For rocks that endure.
For photographers who learn to live.
For scientists who find wonder beyond data.
The End.