Telegram Books: Excerpt from The Year of the Revolutionary New Bread-making Machine

My father laughed when he heard that the government had declared that all bread-makers had to wear white overalls, imagining his workers standing there like patissiers. Next they'd be introducing metal tongs, he said, for handling the dough. The image of his employees dressed like women jarred with his belief that work in a bakery was tough, man's work.

My uncle, who had a bakery far from Ras Beirut, told him that owners, too, would have to wear these overalls, and they chuckled to themselves, each one imagining the other.

A baker was a baker, not what the government deemed he should be; his messy clothes reflected the messy business of manual labour. The bakery itself reflected this too, with its marble step worn thin from years of customer's feet.

Posted by Nancy on August 1, 2006 11:26 AM to Telegram Books