Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul Read Free

quoted from Rumi. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Well, Sunny thought, I’m good with that. As long as it doesn’t come around as a shitload of fog.

2
    Bashir Hadi was hard at work, rubbing the copper espresso machine until it sparkled with the orange and green glow of the coffeehouse walls surrounding it. The aroma of fresh lemon from his worn rag blended with the sweet scent of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven, enough to make anyone’s stomach purr with anticipation.
    Outside, the temperature was dropping, but inside they were safe and warm, busy with the chores that needed to be completed before the Thursday evening rush. The calm before the storm , Sunny used to say. Hopefully tonight would bring the kind of storm they wanted—a crowd that would fill every table in the place—and not the kind that appeared to be brewing in the cloudy sky above. It had become difficult enough to keep the customers they’d worked so hard to get while Sunny was still there, what with the increased measures required by the UN, embassies, and NGOs to ensure the safety of their workers.Yazmina was grateful to Bashir Hadi for convincing first a stubborn Sunny, then later Ahmet and the rest of them, to increase the security. The wall, which now stood tall and defiant beneath Sunny’s magnificent painting of a thousand doves set against a cobalt sky, was the first step, the one that got them UN compliance, that gave sanction for UN personnel to frequent the café. Which they did, until the rules became even tougher. So then came the blast film for the windows, to keep the glass from shattering into hundreds of deadly shards, as well as a safe room for customers to run to upon word of a coming attack. The shipping container they had installed up against the front gate, to serve as an extra checkpoint and a place to deposit weapons, had helped gain more customers, as had the addition of a second chokidor , a young man who was hired to stand guard inside the coffeehouse during busy times. But even with all that, there was nothing they could do about the growing number of foreigners leaving Kabul each day, and there were some nights when their own voices seemed to echo off the walls as they straightened vacant chairs and wiped down the empty tables, trying their best to appear busy.
    Despite the chatter they’d heard from others in the neighborhood who had come to resent the foreigners’ presence in their country, at the coffeehouse they were always welcoming to those who had remained, those who had come to treasure the place as one of the last of its kind in a changing Kabul. But honestly, where else could these people find such good cappuccino and even better conversation? Sunny had worked hard to make the coffeehouse a special gathering place for those far from home, a place filled with laughter and warmth and aromas that clung sweetly to your clothes long into the night. Its reputation was something they were all grateful for, and something Yazminawas determined to preserve, no matter what. Thank goodness tomorrow would be Friday, the start of the Afghan weekend, and the day they would— inshallah , God willing—be making extra money from holding their weekly bazaar in the courtyard out front.
    Friday! Yazmina pushed herself up from the wooden chair where she had settled in to fold a pile of soft purple napkins. So much still to be done.
    â€œI am fine,” she assured Bashir Hadi when she noticed his slanted dark eyes narrow with concern. She placed her hands on her slightly rounded belly and gently rubbed, the warmth from her palms seeping through the thick cotton of her shalwaar kameez and onto her skin. So far no sickness with this little one, not like the last time. She remembered how hard it had been to try to keep hidden the sudden waves of nausea, and the mound growing from under her clothing, for so long. Seven months—from the day Sunny had taken her in until