Al Taiba Dry Fish

If you ever walk through Mirza Ghalib Market, you’ll find us at Shop No. 21-A. It’s on Erskine Road, right in the thick of the bazar. Al Taiba Dry Fish is a small place, honestly. It’s cramped and there are bags of salt and dried fish stacked everywhere. The air is thick with that heavy salt smell, which some people can’t stand, but it’s just the smell of work to us. We spend the day weighing things out, chatting with the regulars, and making sure the stock stays dry. The market gets so crowded in the afternoons that it's hard to even move a cart through the aisles. Sometimes the electricity goes out and we just sit there in the dark for a bit, waiting for it to come back. We don't have a big staff, just a couple of us doing the heavy lifting. We buy what’s good and sell it for what’s fair. It's a lot of manual work, hauling sacks around and making sure the bugs stay out of the dried stock. Nothing is very organized here, but we know where everything is. People come from all over the neighborhood because they know we’ve been in this spot for a long time. It’s just a regular shop in a busy market, nothing more. We just want to get through the day and sell enough to keep the doors open.