The Damascene Rose | الوردة الدمشقية
"A perfumer in Damascus before the war. A journalist documenting its last days. Their brief encounter becomes permanent memory."
The Damascene Rose
الوردة الدمشقية
Damascus, 2011
The jasmine still blooms in Damascus.
Even as protests grow, even as everything changes. The scent remains.
I'm documenting what might be lost.
I'm David.
British journalist, forty-five. I've covered wars. But Damascus feels different—like watching a wound open slowly.
Layla sells perfume in the old souk.
"You're press?"
"I'm a witness."
"Witnesses can't change anything."
"We can remember."
"Is that enough?"
Her family has made perfume for generations.
Roses from Damascus, jasmine from Aleppo. Scents that conquered empires.
"What will you do if everything changes?" I ask.
"I'll make perfume. That's what we've always done."
"You're not scared?"
"I'm terrified. But roses still need distilling. Life continues."
"That's very Syrian."
"Survival always is."
I keep coming back.
For interviews, I tell myself. For the story. But really, for her.
"You're different from other journalists," she observes.
"How?"
"You smell things. Others just look."
"Your perfume is extraordinary."
"It's my grandmother's formula. The real Damascus rose."
"Will you teach me?"
"There's not time. Everything is moving too fast."
One night, the streets outside erupt.
Gunfire, chanting, the sound of history turning.
"You should go," she says. "Back to London."
"I'm not leaving yet."
"You'll have to eventually. Witnesses eventually run out of things to witness."
"Layla—"
"Don't. Don't make promises this place will break."
"Then let me have tonight. Just tonight."
She kisses me surrounded by roses.
The ones that still bloom while the world burns. She tastes like everything Damascus might lose.
"This is grief," she says.
"This is present. The only thing we have."
We make love in her workshop.
Perfume bottles watching, centuries of scent witnessing. She's soft, substantial, everything that matters.
"Beautiful."
"David—"
"I'm here. I'm here."
"I love you," I say at dawn.
"That's impossible."
"Impossible things happen in wars."
"Impossible things end in wars."
I'm evacuated a week later.
The border closes. She stays. The Damascus I knew disappears into smoke.
Ten years later
I find her in Berlin.
Refugee, still making perfume. Smaller batches now, from inferior roses.
"David."
"Layla."
"You remembered."
"I never stopped."
We don't let go this time.
No war to separate us. Just two people who found each other twice.
"Happy?" I ask.
"I'm alive. And so are you."
"Is that enough?"
"It's everything."
She still makes Damascene rose.
From memory now, from what she saved. The scent of a city that exists only in exile.
"For you," she says, handing me a bottle.
"What is it?"
"Us. The night we had. Bottled."
Alhamdulillah.
For roses that survive.
For journalists who remember.
For love that finds its way.
The End.