The Silkworm Keeper
"One of Palestine's last silk farmers, Abu Samer tends his silkworms in the hills outside Nablus—until fashion designer Leila seeks his threads and finds much more."
The Silkworm Keeper
The mulberry trees shimmered silver-green, their leaves the only sound besides wind. Leila had driven three hours on rumors—an old man still making Palestinian silk the traditional way.
"You're from the fashion world."
The voice came from behind. Abu Samer—Samer, really, but the honorific stuck—was leaner than she'd expected, with eyes that held the shimmer of his threads.
"I'm looking for authentic materials."
"Everyone's looking for authentic. Few know what it means."
The silk room was a revelation—wooden trays of silkworms munching mulberry, cocoons in various stages, raw thread being wound onto reels.
"My grandmother did this," Samer explained. "Her grandmother before. I'm the last."
"Why no students?"
"Who wants to tend worms when you can buy machine silk from China?" He shrugged. "I'll die and the knowledge dies with me. That's how it goes."
"Teach me."
"You're a designer. You want to buy, not learn."
"I want both."
She returned for a week, then two. Learning to read the worms' stages, to know when cocoons were ready, to unwind threads so fine they seemed like light.
"You're good," Samer admitted. "Patient. Most give up when the worms die."
"Everything dies. The point is what you make while it lives."
He looked at her strangely. "That sounds like more than silk."
"Maybe it is."
The weeks blurred. Leila found herself staying past lessons, sharing meals, talking about lives that had gone unexpected directions.
"Why aren't you married?" she asked one evening.
"Was. She died young. I had the worms; they became enough."
"Are they?"
"They were." His eyes met hers. "Until you started asking questions I'd forgotten the answers to."
"Questions like what?"
"Like what it feels like to want something beyond silk."
They came together in the silk room, threads surrounding them like blessing.
Samer touched her with a craftsman's care—precise, attentive, building sensation like building thread from cocoon.
"Helwa," he breathed. "Zay el harir." Like silk. "Fine and strong at once."
"Samer—please—"
He entered her with the patience of someone who understood that good things took time. They moved together slowly, building toward a finish that felt woven rather than rushed.
When they came together, it was silk-smooth and shimmering, both of them transformed.
"Stay," Samer said afterward, thread still on his fingers. "Learn everything. Keep it alive."
"I have a career—"
"Build it here. Design with authentic materials. Tell the story." His eyes were earnest. "I'm sixty-two. I can't teach forever. Someone needs to remember."
"And us?"
"Is part of remembering." He kissed her forehead. "The best traditions continue through love, not just technique."
Leila looked at the silkworms—patient, ancient, waiting to become something beautiful.
"Na'am," she said. "But I'm modernizing the production. We need climate control."
"As long as the worms approve."
"They will. I'll ask them."
His laugh echoed through the mulberry trees, and somewhere, centuries of silk makers nodded approval.
The thread continued.