My mother, no longer with a washing basket in tow (for that, was for the old fruit and veg man who she bought all her potatoes and tomatoes from) climbs up the wet driveway and often, these days, my father joins her and they pick lemons and avocados and sometimes butternut from the back of his truck. Sometimes my mother says his lemons are cheap but most of the time she comes back complaining that his prices are too high.
He’s not like our old fruit and veg man, who had knobbly knees below khaki shorts and smoked a pipe while he read the newspaper. His truck was stolen, that’s what we heard.
I was moonfaced back then with polka dot shorts, hanging off the edge of the truck in bata sandals as I played with the weights on his rusting scale.
When he took out his pen from behind his ear to add up the vegetables in the washing basket I would run down the driveway to get ready for madressah.
