Timgad Timeless
"Amel guards the Roman ruins of Timgad. When classics professor Lorenzo arrives translating inscriptions, she shows him that some Latin lives in flesh, not stone. 'El maradh yetkellem' (المرض يتكلّم) - The past speaks."
Timgad emerged from sand like a time machine—Roman streets, Roman baths, Roman hearts still beating.
"Marhba," the guard said. "El site maftoh."
Lorenzo expected ruins. He found her.
Amel had guarded Timgad thirty years—long enough to know what visitors sought and rarely found.
"Rak classicist?"
"Ki 'rafti?"
"El ness elli yqraw Latin 'andhom farig." People who read Latin have an emptiness.
She was substantial—Roman in proportion, Berber in feature, timeless in presence.
"Tqari el Latin?"
"El hjar y'almou." The stones teach. "Thalaetheen sna, net'allem."
Days among inscriptions humbled him. Amel translated what his dictionaries missed.
"Hadi machi 'officially'..."
"El Latin el rasmi." Official Latin. "El ness haka ma hedrouch."
"How do you know how people spoke?"
"Tesma'."
"The stones talk?"
"El maradh yetkellem." The past speaks. "Lazem bass tkoun sahket."
Night brought different Timgad—moonlit colonnades, wind through arches, ghosts almost visible.
"Tesma' tawa?" she asked.
He heard Latin—conversations, arguments, love.
"Ya rabbi."
She led him to the library of Timgad, second largest in Roman Africa.
"Hna qraw el kutub."
"What books?"
"Koulech. El hob. El harb. El hayat."
He kissed her where scholars had kissed, where words had meant flesh.
"Amel..."
"El maradh yetkellem," she whispered. "Tesma' wach yqoul?"
"Ama." Love.
She undressed in ruined library, body a text no book held.
"Mashallah," he breathed.
"El Latin?"
"Pulcherrima." Most beautiful.
He read her like translating—carefully, seeking meaning in every curve.
"Lorenzo," she moaned.
"Hna." He found her inscription. "El kalma el akhira."
She spoke in tongues beneath his attention—Latin, Arabic, sounds older than both.
"Dkhol," she gasped. "El text."
He entered her among fallen books, and language made sense.
"El maradh yetkellem," she cried.
"Wach yqoul?"
"Hada. Hna. Dima."
Their rhythm was meter—rising, falling, the poetry of bodies.
"Qrib," she warned.
"M'aya." He drove into eternity. "El maradh yetkellem."
They spoke together, pleasure the oldest language. Lorenzo held her through the translation.
"El inscriptions?" she asked later.
"Need revision."
"Wach revision?"
"Living context."
His translations transformed classics—scholars debated his unorthodox readings.
"El source?" they demanded.
"Living Latin."
Now he returns each summer, learning what books miss.
"El professor w el harisah," colleagues say.
"El maradh jab'na," Amel smiles.
"El maradh ykhallina," Lorenzo adds.
Some translations take forever.