Richard Krawiec: Facing it at the Halal Market

The short of it is, I spun the wheel sharply to dart in front of the trailer truck that was exiting the parking lot shared with the Silver Spoon Diner, lunging just into the first narrow slanted space in a strip of spaces squeezed against the white cinderblock building of the Halal Market, the truck blasting its air horn too late to stop me from dying if I’d been a few feet slower, and I walked inside to see a woman with mournful eyes and long brown hair darker than her skin look up startled with surprise more than hope, and I nodded and perused the empty store, walked past the unplugged meat cases, along the coolers where two of every three racks gleamed in their vacancy, and turned to the sparsely itemed shelves where I selected cashews, lentils and cheese then wandered to the register where she stood from her folding chair and after pleasantries and chit chat neither of us remembered saying or hearing, she slowly placed my goods inside a plastic sack and held it as if for support, clung to it, and started talking about people, all the people, all the mothers and children, who were having such a hard time, the children, it wasn’t fair, who needed SNAP and how the store wanted to serve them too, but they hadn’t received approval yet for that, or for the permit to cut their own meat, there was only one inspector and he was so far backed up, and it was difficult to get the city to help, and so many people needing so much and they had put all their money into this business and now they couldn’t even afford to order food, 50% tariffs on everything from India, she pointed at the empty rack, and things had been terrible last year under the last president and this year, my God, and she knew so many people, refugees, she asked if I had been to the center downtown, the refugees who had now been cut off by the agencies that brought them here from Syria and Afghanistan and promised them, but then dropped them, these large family groups with young children, she said holding hone hand knee high, and really elderly people, and she held two hands aside as if guiding someone frail through a difficult room, and she said, they really need food help because they’ve been abandoned, everyone abandoned them, she guessed because their budgets were cut back, but what about the mothers, the children, and it’s so difficult, so difficult, being a mother, and how many mothers and children are out there who need help, they need help, and it’s difficult because her son is autistic and she’s afraid she’s going to lose healthcare for him and she wanted to know what would she do then, what could she do, and everything, she said, everything is so fraught and everyone, she said, everyone, is so stressed and suffering, and it’s the world, the whole world is so bad and there isn’t any hope anywhere, she said and she wiped at the side of her eye, trying to stop herself, but after three swipes she let the tears come and she said, I wish they would just finish the war, I wish they would finish it and kill us, just get it over with because we can’t live like this anymore, we can’t stand it, it would be better to just kill us, and she was crying then and I was crying then and in the store I kept looking at her eyes that were sad black holes and she looked at me and she raised her hands just slightly, afraid to ask, and I opened my hands, just slightly asking, and she reached across the counter and I reached across and we hugged and it was totally useless and totally necessary, two strangers in this fractured world and then we parted and found we could breathe just a little, just a little through the sniffles, and discovered we could fill bags with a bit of food, not much, but something, and she knew people to give them to, these small gifts, people who needed them and she started making phone calls and when the first person answered she said, I have something for you, and for the first time she smiled and I stepped outside where the sky was still overcast and the traffic droned and whizzed, and I wheeled out of the lot flooring the gas and puttering into the turning lane and behind me horns blared and rubber squealed and the Market diminished until it was gone within a block and I might have been uncertain it had ever been there except I recognized her perfume like the scent of cyclamens, green and floral, thick and clinging to my jacket which I lifted to my nose and breathed in all the way home so I wouldn’t forget.

Copyright 2025 Richard Krawiec

Richard Krawiec publishes in the U.S. and France. His French novels, Croire en Quoi?, Les Paralyses, Paria, Vulnerables, and Dandy, were published by Tusitala Editions.  Croire en Quoi? won the Libr’à Nous 2025 Award, as well as the Micheline Award.