Shira's Apple Stand

Once I saw a girl about the same age as mine put up her own apple stand at the bazaar. Her name was Shira. Her business, run all on her own, had quite the unusual and inventive model. She was an orphan and did not have her parents to help her with any of it. In her jade shawl and hood scarf, and her small strands of dark hair escaping at the sides, she looked like a sweet child not looking for trouble, innocently running her business. On the day she started it I was there to help her unload crates of her supply behind the stand.

“Right over there, Asif. Yes, yes, careful now!”

“What do you plan to do with all these apples?” I asked. “How much are you going to sell them for?”

“I’m going to give them away for free!”

“What?” I dropped the crate I was holding in front of me to look her in the eyes. “How? You’ll run out of money fast. You can’t do that.”

“Says who?” She smiled, almost like she was going to burst out giggling. “It’s my business. You can help me all you want, but we do it my way.”

“How do you get these apples?”

“I pay for them all by myself. I cut a deal with the apple tree farmer to pick as many as I want if I pay a fee.”

“How do you pay the fee?”

“Yesterday I sold my teal shalwar kameez from my mother. Next time I need more apples, I’m thinking of selling her earrings next.”

“You’re crazy!”

She laughed. “I need those two boxes over there.”

Who was I to criticize the decisions of a crazy orphaned little girl, poorer than a dalit on a crop-dry month? I’ve known Shira for a very long time. I don’t actually remember a time when I didn’t know her. We grew up together playing around the bazaar. As soon as she thought she was old enough, she decided to do this nonsense. I told her she’d just be made fun of by the older men with their real businesses to the sides of hers at the marketplace, but she ignored all I had to say. 

On the day her business opened up, I was getting some vegetables for my mother and happened to walk by her stand. She saw me and smiled, waving me to come over. I dropped my vegetable basket to the side. Her stand was a simple square wooden frame on top of a counter, a sign on the top that she had painted herself to say: “Shira’s Apple Stand.” Right below were the words: “Price for all: free.” The counter had square baskets full of red apples right to the top, angled toward the customer.

“Would you like to be my first customer?” she said.

I was frozen for a moment, taking all of it in. I snapped out of it when she said, “Well, Asif? What will it be? How many apples do you want?”

I shook my head. “You know nothing of how a business works, Shira. You can’t give apples away for free. Who are you even doing this for?”

She exhaled, putting a hand to her forehead. “We’ve been over this. It’s my decision, not yours. I’m doing it for anyone that needs it.”

“Like who? Orphans? Poor people? Homeless people?”

“Anyone.”

Skeptical as I was, understanding the concept was easy. But what I still could not understand was how I could let such a business like this of a good friend slide for days, hours even. It was my moral instinct to explain to her why such a business was wrong. That she was wasting her time, effort, and money she could be using for herself. I did try. She wouldn’t listen. I’d have to figure out how to convince her to close her stand in the following days one way or another. All I wanted was the best for her. Her mother died to a sickness last year, and her father was taken away by guards half a decade ago after his consistent food theft and never seen again. I knew for a fact that once Shira sold what was left of her parents’ belongings, she’d have not a rupee left to her name. Only the clothes on her back and, I don’t know, me, I suppose. I also knew, without her saying a single word, that she was starving every day. Definitely as much as the children she was “selling” these apples to.

I took a fresh apple from the stand. She giggled and said, “That’ll be zero rupees. Enjoy!” I wiped it on my shirt, shook my head, and returned it to her, telling her I didn’t want it.

I made as to leave, but when I looked for where I had left my basket of vegetables, it was gone. Panic struck me as I frantically searched for it. I already imagined the words my mother was going to say.

“Oh no, a thief stole your basket?” said Shira as I whispered about a dozen forbidden words for a kid my age. I watched as she brought out a small basket from under the counter and filled it with apples. She offered it to me.

“I can’t take this,” I said.

“Sure you can! Tell your mother about Shira’s Apple Stand!”

I reluctantly took it off her hands, shaking my head as she said goodbye to me for that day. A little part of me felt bad for doing so, but a bigger part knew how much trouble I’d be in for losing our vegetable basket paid with my mother’s money. Coming back not empty-handed was better. I supposed in the end the fear of me getting in trouble surpassed the hesitation. I promised myself I wouldn’t take any more apples from her from now on.

For the next couple of days I would walk by and observe how her business was going. One time, I remember glancing at her at the stand, and I followed her gaze to a frail, tiny shirtless boy in front of her, looking up at the apple in her hand. She went around the counter, kneeled in front of him, and placed the apple in his hands. “You don’t need to pay a thing, little one,” she said quietly. “You can come for as many as you want. Run along now.” The boy stared at the apple for what felt like a minute before looking back up at her. Then he ran with it into the abyss of the crowd.

Her business really wasn’t easy. And maybe I should use the word “charity” instead. Her customers were truly everyone. Little kids who were hungry, men who needed a snack, mothers who needed to feed their children. I began observing each of their behaviours. The little kids never took more than one or two at a time, and usually if they took two, the other one was for their brother or sister back home. They came and went, always thanked her, and were never excessive in their taking. Others though, the men and women, always took as much as their baskets could hold. These customers forced her to resupply the most. Then there were some teenagers who received some of her apples only to sell them at their own stands at the bazaar, making profit from no expenses. These were the ones that irritated me the most. I told Shira about them but she ignored me like always. “I don’t judge what they do with the apples,” she said. Then I asked, “But don’t you feel as if there’s some people that deserve them less than others? Like those teenagers? What about criminals? Thieves? Murderers?” She’d shake her head. “Nope. Everyone can take my apples, no matter who they are.” I’d call her insane and then she’d laugh. The good thing about it all was that the teenagers never got much money out of selling her apples. It depended on if their customer knew about Shira’s Apple Stand, because if they did they’d always rather get some apples for free from her than buy from the teenagers.

There was one teenager that pestered her the most, a persistently cruel bully. He, just like me, was cynical about Shira’s business and wanted to take it down. But I suppose he wanted to do it to prove her stand wouldn’t last, not that he cared about her well-being, like me. His name was Bahir. Most days he’d usually come just to sneer at Shira’s stand, and she’d tell him to go away. “But I want some apples!” he’d say mockingly. Shira would tell him, “Then take some! Stop making fun of me!”

One day, Bahir brought a massive basket with him to the stand. I don’t even know where he got it. It’s almost as if he made it for a sarcastic purpose. He announced to Shira he needed a huge number of apples for a party he was throwing. His whole extended family would be there. It was obvious he was doing this to spite Shira, but she didn’t back down the challenge. She gave him all the apples she currently had that day, and then told him to come back the next. I saw him looking confused as he was leaving. I was beside her stand, crossing my arms. He looked at me while carrying his heavy basket of apples and said, “Tomorrow? What’s she going to do?” I shrugged at him. I had no idea either.

The next day Shira brought the most apples I have ever seen in my life. I don’t know how she did it. I decided I’d ask her later. There were crates and crates of them, brought to her stand all by herself, and when Bahir came back with his huge empty basket, he didn’t even have enough space to take them all. His basket was too heavy to lift on his own. His face had a look of pure bewilderment. 

“Hopefully that satisfies your needs,” said Shira, smiling with glee. “Here’s your bill: a whopping zero rupees!”

“Unbelievable,” said Bahir. “I’ll just keep coming back, you know. The next day. Then the day after that. With the same demand. How are you going to keep up?”

She shrugged, looking up at the sky. “Business will be booming, then. Asif, he’s struggling with the basket, go help him. It’s getting dark.”

I scoffed. “He’s our enemy! Why would I help him? He’s the one that asked for that many apples! I can’t even finish that many in a lifetime if I wanted to!”

“I don’t need your help, chump,” said Bahir. He continued trying to pull the luggage on his own.

Shira looked at me, then back at him, then back at me. When it was clear I wasn’t going to help him, she made a frustrated noise and came around the counter, standing by Bahir’s side to help him carry it off the ground. Bahir and I looked at each other incredulously. She didn’t leave his side until they carried it to his home. I didn’t go with them. I suppose I didn’t have the guts to help her bully. When she came back it was dark. She was slapping the dust out of her hands. I sort of stared at her in awe.

“Close your mouth,” she said, laughing.

I blinked. “He better have thanked you.”

“He did. His parents greeted me at the doorstep, too. After Bahir explained to them all the apples were free, they begged me to take some money from them.”

“Did you take it?”

“I refused it.”

I stared at her. I asked her gently, “Shira, what did you sell for that many apples?”

At first, she didn’t answer. I shouted, “I’m serious!”

“Don’t yell! I gave my father’s watch to the farmer.”

I could not believe it. I was seething inside. I glanced at her apple stand. There were a couple dozen apples left in the baskets, and the paint was peeling off the corners of the sign already. Ants and flies surrounded the apples that fell to the ground at the sides. The sight was an innocent one. Mouldy, in shambles, yet innocent. It was a weak frame, barely held together by the nails hammered in by a little girl, one who was weaker than me. If she could build it, I had the strength to destroy it. At this point I was very angry at Shira. She sold possibly the most valuable thing she had and gave away all its value in the form of apples to Bahir, not for herself. I did not want to be responsible for her death, when she’d inevitably starve so. There was this sense of obligation in me to end this circus tonight. This was a spectacle of humble generosity eating away at her rational sense like a parasite of selfish altruism.

For a while we looked at each other in silence. Her eyes looked somber as if dreading a thing coming soon, something unstoppable. Shira, she can be scary when she’s sad and quiet. Mostly because I can count the number of times I’ve seen her sad on one hand. In my mind she’s always been this infinite bundle of joyful energy. Not this time. We stood there awkwardly for a moment of which I lost count of the minutes, averting our gazes elsewhere. When she spoke first she startled me. It was this tired, defeated voice: “I’m going to sleep. It’s another day of business tomorrow. Good night, Asif.”

“Good night.”

She left the bustling bazaar, still alive with activity in this evening, leaving me with her apple stand. I was still frozen, the wind of the night a cool breeze, reminding me of another night in the past when Shira and I were younger and had this very important talk about her childhood strife and poverty. I had found her on a random sand dune looking over the desert near the boundary of our town. There was no vegetation except a few shrubs. She was sitting at the top of the dune, facing the empty desert, seemingly lost in thought, her knees in her arms. I had walked up the dune and sat beside her, doing the same.

“My father was a merchant,” she said. “Way before he had me, he told me stories of how he travelled the seas seeing people around the world. The stories that stuck with him the most, as well as me, were the ones about the bottom of the bottom. The ones barely scraping by to live, resorting to stealing or killing for a piece of bread. He never shied away from the gruesomeness of the details.” She paused, leaving me enough time to picture things in my head. “I grew up thinking, if I had the power to give food to those that needed it, especially the children, no one had to grow up having to steal or kill, no kid had to become thieves or murderers.” She exhaled. “Before my mother died, she told me to find work, and if the money wasn’t enough, to steal food from the stands, to run away from the guards if I was caught. And that if things got desperate, I could sell our belongings. That broke me, in a way.”

I didn’t reply for a long time. I shuffled my feet, looking at them in the sand. “What do you plan to do?”

She thought about her answer. “I’m going to buy apples. I’m going to buy apples, and I’m going to give them away for free. For as long as I can, until I run out of apples. I’ll sell my clothes if I have to. I’ll walk naked if it means I can give just one more apple to one more starving orphan for one more day. Because if there’s no one to save someone from starvation for one extra day except me, then it has to be me.”

We stared at the desert dunes for a long time.

She brought out a watch from her pocket. “This is my father’s watch. He got this on a trip to Morocco. I’m going to sell this when I need money the most. When I have no other choice. When I’m broke as I’ll ever be.”

“And you’ll only use the money for you.” I looked at her. “Okay? No one else. Promise me. Whatever you use the money for, it won’t be for someone else. Only you.”

“What?”

“Promise me.”

“Okay, Asif. I promise.”

I returned back to the present, blinking in front of the apple stand, out of my daydream.

I decided I was really going to do it. I went behind the counter and found a sledgehammer, picked it up, and gripped it tight. Then I slammed the hammer on the stand, breaking it apart, destroying it to pieces. It went on for forever. At the corners of my vision I saw the people of the bazaar staring at me, watching with curiosity as wooden pieces flew off in every direction with every strike of my hammer. None of them stopped me. They all knew who Shira was, the girl with the apple stand business, the girl who gave away free apples to anyone who needed them. But when they saw a boy destroying her precious business, right in front of their eyes? None of them stopped me. None of them cared. When I was done, I felt like shouting at them: “Why did none of you stop me?” I imagined that they would pretend not to hear me. I stood there, in cold sweat, breathing hard, gripping the hammer. It was done. Her stand was completely demolished. This was for her own good. 

Shira selling her father’s watch was my breaking point. I didn’t want to stand by and watch the world take advantage of her. By destroying her apple stand, I was her greatest ally. She will thank me when she gets older.

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