Sidon Sea Glass | زجاج بحر صيدا
"She collects sea glass from Sidon's ancient shores. He's the marine biologist studying the coast. Together they discover that some treasures wash up when you stop searching. 'Inti ahla min kil shi la'ayto 'al baher' (أنتِ أحلى من كل شي لقيتو عالبحر)."
Sidon Sea Glass
زجاج بحر صيدا
The Mediterranean keeps secrets.
For three thousand years, Sidon's shores have collected broken things—Phoenician vessels, Roman glass, Ottoman bottles. All tumbled smooth by time.
I collect what the sea offers.
I'm Mira.
Forty-seven, widowed five years, built generous by grief and good cooking. My sea glass collection is famous among Sidon's antique dealers.
Dr. Sami Nassar thinks I'm disturbing his research site.
"Inti badnik trou7i."
"This is a public beach." I hold up my glass piece—ancient, blue-green, Phoenician probably. "I've collected here for thirty years."
"And I have permits for coastal research."
"Permits don't erase tradition."
He's fifty.
Lebanese-American, Scripps Institute, here on climate grant. Studies how the Mediterranean is changing—warming, acidifying, dying slowly.
"Your sea glass," he says one morning, "it's disappearing."
"Kifak ya'ni?"
"The currents are shifting. This beach won't exist in twenty years."
That stops me.
This beach holds my marriage, my mourning, my survival. The thought of it gone—
"Show me."
"Shu?"
"Show me the data. I want to understand."
His research station is a converted fishing shack.
Charts, equipment, the organized chaos of science. He explains currents and erosion with hands that move like the sea.
"This matters to you."
"My wife was from Sidon." Past tense hangs heavy. "She's why I study these waters."
"Was?"
"Cancer. Eight years ago."
We become unlikely partners.
He studies the sea; I catalog what it surrenders. My collection becomes his data—timestamps, locations, changing patterns.
"Inti bi tsaedini," he admits.
"W inta bi t'alemni."
"Even trade."
Except it's not even.
I'm falling. Watching his hands, his focus, the way grief has shaped him like sea glass—edges smoothed by time.
"Sami..."
"Mira."
Just our names. But in that syllable, everything.
The kiss happens at sunset.
Salt on his lips. My hands in his silver-streaked hair. The Mediterranean witnesses, like it's witnessed everything.
"I shouldn't—"
"La." I pull him closer. "Li'anno inti lazem. W ana kamen."
We make love in his research shack.
On the cot where he sleeps, surrounded by charts of dying seas. I feel the metaphor in my bones—cherish what's disappearing.
"Mira—mashallah—"
"Don't talk. Feel."
His hands map my body like coastlines.
Every curve a bay, every fold a cove. He studies me with scientific intensity.
"Beautiful," he murmurs.
"Old. Worn."
"Tumbled smooth." He kisses my belly. "Inti ahla min kil shi la'ayto 'al baher."
When he enters me, I understand tides.
The push and pull, the surrender to forces larger than ourselves. My hips rise to meet his.
"Sami—"
"Ouli—"
"Don't stop. Please don't stop."
He doesn't.
Builds me like waves build—slow, certain, inexorable. I crest against him, crying out, coming undone.
He follows, groaning my name into my shoulder, spending himself like the sea spends itself on shore.
We lie tangled as the Mediterranean darkens.
"The beach will disappear," he says.
"Then we document everything. Together."
"Together." He kisses my forehead. "I like that word."
Five years later
The beach is half what it was.
But our archive—sea glass, photos, data—preserves what was. Museums want it. We say no.
"It belongs to Sidon," we tell them.
It belongs to us. To what we found while collecting broken things and making them whole again.
Alhamdulillah.
For beaches that disappear slowly.
For scientists who mourn beautifully.
For collectors who find treasures they weren't seeking.
The End.