Nabil al-­Bakri

On my gravestone it says: god is great and we are his children. Who the hell carved that there, I wonder? I am the son of my mother, Ayesha al-­Bakri, and my father, Abu Nabil Muhamed al-­Bakri. Whether God also played a part in my genesis I can’t say. I never got to know him.

I was nineteen when I arrived here with my parents, after a long journey. It was winter, and cold. The first time I saw snow on the streets I thought there had been an accident. Father wrung his hands. We want to create a garden of Eden in this desert of ice, he said.

He opened the shop on Marktstrasse, Uncle Abu’s Vege­tables and Exotic Fruits. Although he had long since turned a deaf ear to the unadulterated word of God and decided to go through life without any other creed, force of habit made him unroll a small rug in the cellar several times a day and send his prayers towards Mecca from among the potatoes and swedes. When one day the Turkish plumber, whom he had called in to repair a burst pipe, revealed to him that he’d got the direction wrong and had for years been turning his backside to the Kaaba instead of his face, my father thanked him and counted out twice the usual tip into his hand.

Not to worry, he said. After all, Mecca is everywhere.

The plumber nodded. Cabbages floated past their knees.

In the beginning I sorted plums, polished melons, or scrubbed the squashed fruit off the pavement. Later, I got my own apron and was allowed to serve customers. I liked the smells and colours. I loved to hear walnuts clicking in their sacks, and when no one was watching I would plunge my hands deep into the basket of lentils, or let almonds and pistachios trickle through my fingers. Mother and I stacked the peaches and nectarines into artistic pyramids, and I would drive out into the fields with Father to negotiate with the farmers.

The business did well over the years; we had all we needed. I can’t say whether my parents were happy, but I saw them smile a lot. They didn’t live to be very old, but their deaths were peaceful.

After my parents died, I took over the shop. I whitewashed the salesroom, hung strings of colourful little lights around the window frames and ordered new aprons. I painted over Uncle Abu’s Vegetables and Exotic Fruits with ochre-­yellow paint and nailed a big wooden sign above the entrance: Nabil al-­Bakri’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetables – from all over the world.

I gave a party to celebrate the reopening. There was music and sweet dried fruit all day long. Many more people came than I had hoped, and late that evening, when the last guests had left and I pulled down the rattling shutter, I knew it would all be all right. I sat down in the dark and placed my hands, palm upwards, on my knees. I had a strange impulse to thank God. I recited what I believed to be the right words. But even as they were coming out of my mouth, I thought about them, and the more I thought about them, the more meaningless they seemed. They were empty and brittle like the fruit crates stacked in the cellar.