The Man Who Knew All The Names Of My City

His family ran a grocery store for many years. It was the most advanced and popular store in the city and they used to sell the products you didn’t find anywhere else. For instance, they provided couscous when there was nobody from North Africa living here.

When his wife died, he closed down the centenarian store and he dedicated his life to drawings. He moved to Paris and he specialized in dancers: he drew their movements, the art itself, and the technique. Then he came back, composed a book with his drawings, and developed ideas for more books. One day, he came to our printing house with a lot of drawings and some texts and he said he needed someone to listen to his stream of ideas about a new book.

This is how I met him. It was a nice break in the routine. We sat at a round table and he started to talk about names, surnames and nicknames. Soon I realised that the book wasn’t that complicated. He only wanted someone to listen to him and to talk with. Although he was very old and seemed weak, his eyes were young and he looked at everything as if he was about to draw it.

One day I told him that I liked his drawings of the ancient gypsies of our city. He did a lot of them to illustrate their funny nicknames in the book. The day after he gave me the original drawing of one of those gypsies. Now that he’s gone and he’s been awarded a posthumous golden medal of the city, one of my mates told me that this drawing may become even more valuable than it was already — but this is impossible.

Update: these are the gypsies he drew.