Sublime

Adhav is a dabbawala. (Dabba is the Hindi word for those metal tiffin boxes, wala is an amalgam of “doer” and “merchant.”)

Haj Taher Kamal was a merchant because his father had been a merchant, and his father before him. Merchants were the glue that bound Nablus to the surrounding villages: for the village people they functioned as credit lines, patrons, employers, even friends; for the city dwellers they were both harbingers of novelty and pillars of tradition, and wh