Al-Mehak International

We’re down in the basement at Q-40 in the New Fruit Market at Azadpur. If you’ve ever been to Azadpur, you know how chaotic it gets. There are trucks everywhere and people shouting about prices since before the sun even comes up. It’s not the cleanest place in the world, just a lot of concrete and crates. We’ve been Al-Mehak International for quite a while now. The "International" part makes it sound a bit more grand than it really looks when you’re standing in a basement surrounded by boxes of fruit. We mostly handle the sorting and getting things ready to move out. It’s a lot of heavy lifting and checking to see what’s ripe and what isn't. My brother and a few other guys help out. We don’t have fancy office chairs, just some plastic ones and a desk that’s seen better days. We drink a lot of tea from the guy who walks around with the kettle. Sometimes the power goes out and we have to use flashlights to see what we’re doing. It’s just the way things work here. We don’t try to act like we’re some big corporation. We’re just local people doing our jobs in the market. Every day is different depending on what comes in on the trucks. Some days are good, some are just long. We just keep going because that’s the work we have.