Abaya

Our shop is at Number 3 in the Hussaini Building. It’s right there on Moulana Azad Road, 213-215. If you see the Bori Masjid, we are just right beside it. It’s a very busy part of the city, so there is always people walking by and cars honking. Abaya is a small shop, but we have a lot packed into the space we have. We spend most of our day talking to people who stop in while they are out doing their shopping. It’s nice being near the masjid because there is always a sense of community. Sometimes the shop feels a bit small when more than three people come in at once, but we make it work. We’ve got some shelves and racks that we put together ourselves. It’s not like those big malls with the bright lights and the uniforms. We just wear what we want and talk to customers like they are our neighbors, because usually they are. We’ve been at this spot for a while and we know most of the other shopkeepers on the block. We drink a lot of tea and wait for the afternoon rush. It gets hot in the afternoons, especially with the door open to the street, but we have a small fan that helps a bit. It’s a simple life running a shop here. The floor is a bit worn out from all the feet coming through, but that just shows how many people we see in a week.