Several times a week I visit our local shop. Since grocery stores can now be open so late at night, my life has changed for the better. Our proprietor just up the street is Turkish. I walked over this evening, intent on some rosé to take the heat wave down a peg. He had just lit a cigarette outside but he had the generosity to pop back in as soon as he saw me. I had not been in the store ten seconds when the telephone rang. Someone on the other end of the line was upset. The storekeeper immediately sensed that the issue was the cell phone that had been left outside on the bench where all the workers have a beer and a chat after their long days on building sites. But he got no further than that. The caller did not speak much German. Just then however, another customer joined us in the store. “You speak Italian, right?” queried our store man. “Well, actually Portuguese,” the customer answered. But he took the phone and tried to tell whoever was calling that the cell phone had been found and could be picked up at the store. But the caller still seemed agitated. The store telephone was subsequently passed on to me. In the mixture of English and Italian that I tried to speak, I believe that the caller got it that the store closes at 10 and opens again at 10 in the morning and that the cell phone could be picked up anytime. He calmed down and hung up. In one minute a good deed had been done and we all felt good about being citizens of multicultural Kleinbasel using all the means at hand to communicate.
Claire Bonney