By the time people started saying that time moved differently in his shop, Hassan Ali was already too old to correct them. The shop sat just off Bethnal Green Road, squeezed between a nail bar and a chicken shop that smelled of old oil and teenage hunger. Its window was crowded with clocks — wall … Read more
In the early mornings, before Brick Lane remembered who it was supposed to be, Abdul Malek walked the street as if it were a long, slow river and he was the last fisherman who still knew its secret currents. The shutters on the sari shops were half-asleep. The curry-house signs blinked like tired eyelids. Only … Read more
The morning light in Whitechapel always arrived reluctantly, squeezing itself through terraces and shopfronts like someone slipping into a room they weren’t entirely welcome in. On Durward Street, where old ghosts and old languages clung to the walls like paint that never quite dried, a small tailor shop sat wedged between a Polish bakery and … Read more
By the time the sun began to slide behind the grey-brown buildings of Mile End Road, the shop signs started to blink themselves awake. Neon halal signs hummed softly. Steam wrapped itself around the glass of the kebab shop like a shy ghost. Buses exhaled people at the stop opposite the big Tesco, and those … Read more