If my mother remained an enigma, the circumstances and routines of my father’s life had always been so physically clear and evident to me. Most of his life, he spent endless hours at the store on Egypt Street, a narrow cobblestone street lined with warehouses, a few blocks from Thessaloniki’s Sea Port of entry. After the financial crash of Greece in 1932 and the civil war that followed World War II, business owners in the 1950s had to work hard to start and grow their enterprises. Fortunately for my father, the Greeks from Turkey had brought their love of coffee to Thessaloniki, and more quickly than anyone would have guessed, his business was booming—which was good for him and for me.
(First published in Memoirist)
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