It’s summer in the global south (which is winter in the global north), and for the month of January Literatur.Review is bringing them all together, publishing previously untranslated or unpublished stories from the north and south of our world.

Ali AlShaali (Arabic: علي الشعالي) is an Emirati poet, editor and cultural activist. He has published five poetry anthologies and a novel. In addition, he has recently published a collection of cultural essays on publishing and writing, 'Chambers with Windows"', and a collection of short stories, 'Pomegranate flavored lives', from which this story is taken.

From time to time, I am the target of jealousy and acerbic gossip from my competitors - Arslan the immigrant, the mechanic with callused palms and grease-blackened fingers, the young Afghan chosen by The Kitchen magazine - despite his broken English - to be its November 'personality of the month'. The magazine devoted eight pages to him in an interview tracing his career, his success, and his art of preparing one of the tastiest dishes in the heart of the paradise of art, architecture and pleasure: New York. Arslan offers gourmet comfort to both its perpetually weary residents and its visitors hungry for something new.
I don't mind... I don't mind my competitors munching away on my living, bitter flesh. I'm not denying my past, quite the contrary. Yes, I helped my father repair cars in my country for seven years. Later, I sacrificed part of the family inheritance to pay smugglers to facilitate my passage from one bright spot on the world map to another. When I arrived in the Big Apple, even before my sea-soaked clothes had time to dry, I wandered the streets looking for work. I started as a day labourer in a tyre replacement and repair shop. Everyone has a past: either you cover it up with fabricated stories, or you use it to move forward. I chose the second option, because my imagination has never been able to invent tales. I am what I am, nothing more, and I speak my, even if it costs me dearly - that's how we are in Afghanistan.
Despite all this, I am now a renowned leader. I wear the mask of courtesy and am invited to give lectures translated in real time, as well as leading workshops where I teach cooking enthusiasts the art of seasoning and grilling kebabs without them losing their juices. I also help participants connect with Asia, even from afar, and work with them to learn how to live in the moment and savour it to the full. A talented chef and a true gourmet does not let his mind wander from east to west in the presence of food: you have to forget everything except your plate.
New York, however, rarely offers such moments of clarity. If there's one lesson I've learned since arriving in America as an immigrant, it's to stay vigilant, to read the people and environment around me carefully, and to keep at least one eye open, even in my sleep.

I also realised that I couldn't depend on American products to prepare biryani, as its flavour is rooted in its land of origin. Here, in the land of dreams, you can find dried garlic of acceptable quality, red onions with a bright flavour, chillies that sting the nostrils, potatoes of all kinds, parsley and coriander with bold flavours, sweet corn, wheat designed for the hands of bakers, and a few other cereals. But the Afghan biryani doesn't care about any of that. To prepare this dish as my mother did for our Friday family lunch in Kabul, I have to mix basmati rice with spices, carried with maternal care, like a nurse carrying her child. These spices come from over there, from Asia, where cardamom has a flavour and a fragrance that go straight to the heart, where cinnamon is not just a wooden stick used to decorate dishes, just like cloves and cumin. There, herbs and spices possess a precious essence that truly corresponds to their names.
This November, I will have been living in Manhattan for 19 years. As soon as the city's parks take on their flamboyant autumnal hues, I know that another year has passed. Leaving my home town to go on an adventure wasn't a difficult decision. I had nothing left to lose after the disappearance of my family. I buried my parents with my own hands in the space of six months. My mother died of pneumonia, and science couldn't help her fight the disease. She tried desperately to grasp the vacuum with her jaws, swallowing air like a fish out of water. When we were finally able to get her on a ventilator, her body, used to deprivation, couldn't cope with the abundance. She was poisoned by too much air. She drowned in oxygen in her bed.
My father, overwhelmed by grief, was consumed little by little, before falling like a withered tree. My brother Abdul and I were plunged into a whirlwind of loss, as if the sun had gone out and a relentless chill blanketed us. By his final days, my father had withered like a dried apricot. That day, three men and I barely managed to carry his coffin from the car stuck in the traffic jam to the deep grave. There, they entrusted his body to me as I sank into the mud, and I lowered him alone, unaided, into his eternal bed. He went lightly.
As for Najibullah, my closest brother, his soul flew away before my parents'. It wasn't grief or poverty that took him, but the tools of war that scientific progress fuels. I doubt there was enough of his body left to bury. How can a human being, by nature fragile, survive when even rocky mountains are shattered by the impact of bombs? The whole of Afghanistan was shaking. Armies from afar were dropping bombs weighing several tonnes to clear the mountains and valleys of the ‘enemies of civilisation’. Najib was neither a true warrior nor a man of principles. He wasn't defending any cause. He had joined these misguided groups out of boredom, as he confided to me one peaceful night before taking his bag and leaving the house for the mountains, crossing streets populated by shadows. We, the people of Kandahar, had learnt to live with the constant roar of explosions and the blinding light of shrapnel. But Najib and his ilk couldn't get used to it. They refused to accept Afghanistan in its new reality and disintegrated. My father, on hearing the news, sank into a profound silence until we left Kandahar to settle in Kabul, where we melted into the hustle and bustle of the city.
They've all gone, gone to heaven. Only my younger brother Abdul remains, five years my junior, who was spoilt rotten by our mother. He was the one the family chose to receive a formal education. The whole family had bet on him, the youngest, to transform our reality and build a different future. My father, on the other hand, had chosen me to help him in his workshop, perhaps to restore the dignity I'd lost after failing at school. ‘We should teach him a trade, so that he can earn a living with his hands’. My mother would nod, silently.

I learned the mechanics and secrets of cars at a very early age. It wasn't long before I became one of the stalwarts of the garage, and a few months later I spotted my father from a distance, pointing at me with a proud smile.
He put me in charge of buying supplies for the house, took me with him to choose spare parts, and involved me in his business with blacksmiths, scrap dealers and second-hand parts traders. ‘Listen and learn’, he would say.
Despite all this, I felt a certain emptiness in my life. Compared to Najib's memory, which wafted through our house and the neighbourhood like the scent of toasted pine trees, and the academic prowess of Abdul, who breezed through university like a knife through butter, mechanics and manual labour in the garage didn't seem like a promising path at the time. Yet - and let's be honest - these experiences taught me a thing or two about management, being kind to people and things, treating customers wisely, and the importance of accepting one's fate.
Fortunately for me, I didn't inherit a profession like sewing or farming from my father, because I have no patience such work. I like to see the results of my efforts quickly: repairing a car, seeing its owner drive off happily, or cooking for lovers of good food, a quick route to a satisfied and happy customer.
After the death of my parents and Najib, the house became empty and sad, while Abdul came and went like a shadow. Looking back, I regret not starting a quarrel, so that Abdul and I could discuss his problems for hours, as we used to do in the old days, hovering around a blazing fire until it burnt itself out.
I had hoped, in vain, that Abdul, who excelled in his studies, would understand that the jealousy and rivalry of our childhood should not prevent us from supporting each other in adulthood, especially in such painful circumstances. But my intelligent brother did not grasp this idea. Our estrangement continued to grow, even while I was still in my country. I felt that my soul had moved elsewhere, while my body struggled to survive in its native land. It was then that I realised that immigrants are not simply uprooted. It is the hardships of life in their own country that ground them, until they flow like water across the land, heading for an unknown destination. They wander, but with a purpose.

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I was sitting hunched over in a nightclub, drowning my sorrows, when I heard from Abdul's friend Rahma, a brilliant entertainer, that Abdul had emigrated. As usual, the elusive scoundrel had beaten me to it. He changed his name to Kevin and headed west, to a land of dark clouds, where the four seasons appear on trees and pavements. A few months later, he called me from Germany. His voice was cold, foreign, not like ours. He spoke, but said nothing. I felt he was prolonging the conversation to test something inside him, something he hadn't yet resolved.
‘Don't talk to me like this, Abdul - I'm not dead yet!..’ I said. He simply sighed, then ended the empty call by interrupting me: ‘Listen, listen... Arslan, we are what we are. We're not going to change. And your voice reminds me of everything I want to forget. I'm sorry, but let this be our last phone call.
Abdul never failed to leave me with a bitter taste in my mouth. Perhaps he thought - with what my mother had forged in his character and her unconditional support despite his endless nightclub shenanigans - that he had the right to share his pain with us and drink the remaining drinks to our health. We always carried his burden with him. But with my parents gone, and their support with them, I've decided to no longer indulge him in the name of the dead.
When Abdul felt that I had abandoned him, he took his revenge. He packed up his university degree, his talent for languages, and hung on to the tail of the caravans. He left, like those who had gone before him: Najib, Mum, Dad. He went into exile on earth, not in heaven, and left me, alone.
I'm not as good as Abdul at languages, and I didn't change my name when I arrived in the capital of the world. In New York, I have friends of all colours and religions, and I've never seen the point of shortening my name or adapting it to the Western language. Here, languages are flexible and capable of anything. Arslan is more than enough. What could I take away from a name like that? On the contrary, I added a letter, an ‘i’ at the end, to create a rhyme with our emblematic dish: Arslani Biryani.
When I moved from my kiosk to my restaurant on Fifth Avenue, in the heart of the city, the sign maker approved of this decision. According to him, the harmonious sound of the two words made them dance together, like a tango. But he didn't stop there: he added a bright red exclamation mark and wrote the name of the restaurant in a rounded font. He assured me that this would attract the attention of passers-by, especially young people: ‘Arslani Biryani’! And he was right. Most of my customers are under forty.
In the beginning, I opened the kiosk with what was left of my inheritance. My assistant was a small, reserved young Afghan called Mir. I don't know what my culinary career would have become without him. Mir was patient with customers, good at solving problems and he put up with my mood swings. I could order him to hurry up in front of the customers, reprimand him for using his mobile or entrust him with cleaning the inside and outside of the kiosk; he always obeyed as if he were in the military.
I never spared Mir the harshness that I had inherited from my life in arid lands. I'd scold him if he dawdled, and if he gave the wrong change, I'd lecture: ‘Mir, every dollar counts if we want to leave this chicken coop and open a real restaurant.’ He would shake his head and smile, as if he found the idea unrealistic. That was early on. But over time, I saw a growing faith in our success germinate in him, like a wild mountain plant, made hardy by drought.
Mir would sometimes fall asleep in a chair between two rush hours, to regain his strength. If I woke him with my fingertips, he would jump up like a wet bird and get straight back to work: filling the plates with rice, adding sultanas, onions and cashew nuts - our unique blend - and placing a small tin of yoghurt next to our chilli paste. He would then hand the dish to the customer. He would repeat this ritual until midnight, when the tide of customers finally ebbed. Then we'd catch our breath, count the day's takings and I'd give him his share. Mir would kiss the folded notes before slipping them into his pocket.

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Almost an hour. That's how long it takes by subway from Central Park in Manhattan to my flat in Brooklyn. Just an hour, a small dot on the timeline, preceded by a much longer line of journeys: a first stop in Istanbul, then Ireland, a stint in Jamaica, and finally here.
Mir and I would close the kiosk after cleaning up, packing up the rubbish and throwing it away. Then we'd go back to what we called home, a room with two bunk beds and a bathroom shared with our flatmates in the building.
On the subway, I drown out the creaking metal by listening to Nusrat Fateh Khan. I listen to his songs with my mind empty. His recitations, full of the flavours of Afghanistan, help to cure my nostalgia. I never tire of his song Mast Qalandar. Its organised chaos transports me to Kabul. I stand in its busy markets, breathing in the scents of fruit and barbecue smoke, and relive scenes from the past. My heart becomes a crossroads, a passageway for the currents of memory. But I know when to remember and when to forget. It's an art, the favourite sport of all immigrants.
Those who know me know that I was never religious or patriotic. I grew up as a simple mechanic, without nodding my head like a dervish, beating a drum or chanting slogans. And yet I survived. Today, I bite into the apple of the world with my teeth intact and offer biryani as a token of friendship and peace. Isn't that, in itself, a patriotic act?
In New York, the days are short, and my almost twenty years here have flown by like a gulp of water. In this city, the wind swirls between the buildings, and the sky darkens rapidly. The earth awakens at dawn, traffic wardens wave their arms, directing the dense morning traffic, and in the evenings, theatres fill up with romantics. The river of life here is wild, carefree and unpredictable. It is slowed for me only by the comments of the other cooks about my supposed excess of sultanas in the biryani to satisfy the American palate, addicted to sugar. They see it as manipulation. But I don't pay any attention to what my competitors say. My father taught me to keep my eyes open and my ears closed. Whenever I complained about the rebellion of the garage mechanics, or their schemes against me and each other, he reminded me of the effectiveness of detachment in the face of malicious and cunning people.
From my restaurant on Fifth Avenue, a block from Central Park, I watch New York in all its glory. I can see employees stealthily slipping away from their desks, I can guess the identity and fate of passers-by. I gesture to Mir, who is busy collecting customers, and we exchange a knowing smile. ‘Repentant smugglers’, I say, spotting them by their expensive bags. We also identify the ‘naive tourists’, and our eyes meet those of couples discreetly kissing like birds in forgotten corners.

Afghans and our Asian brothers struggle to survive in the restaurant and entertainment market, an eternal struggle that comes to a head in the big cities. Yet I consider myself a lucky man - still alive, albeit far from my homeland, and blessed with a promising friendship with the beautiful Savina. We often argue, but we're happy nonetheless.
I've structured my life as a night owl should, and luckily the food I serve isn't eaten until after midday. I start my work when the sun is high in the sky, above the buildings, and I don't mind the accusations of being an interloper in the profession. I forged my own destiny with my own hands.
I do know, however, that cheap gossip proliferates like wild mushrooms among New York's Afghan circles. The story goes that Arslan arrived here with a small Koran in his right pocket, a worn leather wallet containing a hundred dollars and a photo of his father, and a driving licence that is useless in this country.
But Arslan succeeded. He has drawn crowds to his kiosk every afternoon, just as the bustling city begins to unfold its charms for visitors and locals alike. Music accompanies the traffic jams, and lights flash from the giant screens. Here, people rush to enjoy the spicy rice with plastic spoons, stuffing their mouths as they walk, brimming with palpable anxiety.

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In the restaurant today, two men are smiling broadly. I've seen them before, several times, and I never overlook such details. They're not spies for other restaurants - they usually come with a fake girlfriend, with whom they maintain a bland dialogue, struggling to pass the time and accomplish their mission. They pose as a couple to make their visit more believable, order almost every dish on the menu to photograph, barely taste it, and leave with a haul for their masters.
Tonight, these two men do not fall into this category. The way they interact with each other and with the waiters shows that they are employees of an official organisation with well-established codes and rules. I can see it in their posture, the way they speak, and the papers they don't try to hide. So I can confirm that they are neither intelligence agents nor investigators.
In reality, I'm an ordinary, almost boring man: I commute between my restaurant and my new house two blocks away, then come back the next morning, day in, day out. I rarely take two weeks off a year, which is the main source of conflict with Savina. But that's the discipline of the hard-working mechanic in me, and what can I do about it? I know that I don't deserve hours of surveillance or detailed reports. These efforts would be better spent on other men like me, freshly arrived here, who still wear the traditional trousers and shirts of the Indian subcontinent. As for me, I feel acceptably integrated. Apart from the language, which has defeated me, I give many people the impression that I am an immigrant who is true to the experience.
I'm a son of the mountains, and I know how to deal with wolves. These two men will not leave my restaurant tonight without me knowing who they are. I move tactically from table to table, approaching them without showing too much eagerness. I greet them in passing: ‘Welcome to Arslani Biryani’. They are quick to respond: ‘Hello and thank you, Mr Arslan. We're big fans of yours, but we're here on behalf of a restaurant rating organisation, and we'd like to have a chat with you, if you don't mind.’
‘Of course, which organisation do you represent?’
‘Michelin. Your restaurant has been nominated for two stars. We're finalising the process, it's just a matter of formalities.’
At this point I asked permission to sit with them. I had to. I had waited so long for this day. Before I left my kiosk, I didn't know this organisation and I didn't pay much attention to it. But when I saw their stars decorating the entrances and websites of my competitors, I decided that I needed them too.
They asked me at length about Afghan and Oriental cuisine: the ingredients, the preparation methods. I answered them generously. Then the conversation took a more personal turn, which didn't bother me. I offered them some pomegranate juice: ‘Here, what's next?
‘Thank you, Chef Arslan, for your patience and cooperation. This is the last stage. Part of the interview is simply dedicated to getting to know you better and documenting what you say, nothing more. Can you tell us about your origins?
‘When I was young, I fled the misery of my country and my region. I vowed to spread happiness around me, starting with myself. And good food is happiness, isn't it?’
‘Absolutely. And why did you choose New York in particular?’
I tried to deflect the question, but my hot blood ran to my hardened Afghan head. I said what needed to be said: ‘We are here, gentlemen, because you are there.’