“Wait, then know exactly when to move."
---
"The morning I remember most, the city was already coming apart," Samir says. "Lebanon's civil war had started the year before. My family had decided we were leaving before it got any worse. Roads out of the city closed that same week, and my father wanted us gone that very day."
Samir asked for one more morning at the shop first. Just one.
"The beans went into the drum, and my hand was already on the lever. I was ready the second I heard the crack. Abu Khalil put his hand over mine. Wait, he said. I waited three more seconds, and it felt like three hundred. Now, he said, and I pulled the lever. It was the best batch that shop had ever roasted. I know because he told me so himself. First time in nine months he said a good word to me."
Samir sets the scraper down and looks at the ruined pot as if it owes him an apology.
"That was the last thing he ever taught me," he says. "Wait, then know exactly when to move. I got on a boat two days later. Canada took in families like mine that year, part of a program built for Lebanese people caught in the fighting. I never smelled a roast that good again. So I decided years ago that I would rather roast and drink my own coffee than settle for anyone else's. Every Sunday for fifty years, a small pan sat on my stove at home. Nobody's business but mine, until today."
For a moment, nobody says anything. Then Ronnie, quiet until now, asks the only question that matters.
"Did you ever see him again? Abu Khalil?"
Next Sunday, Chapter 4. Samir shakes his head slowly. "Some doors only swing one way,"
