Abdul Jabbar Raufi was feeding birds when I met him. The lunch rush was coming to an end and he was enjoying the perfect afternoon weather. He is calm as he tells me the story about how he got to Canada from Afghanistan eleven years ago. “First we have to go to Iran by car, and then to India and then to Toronto because we could not leave from Afghanistan.” He came here with his four brothers and his mother and father, all seven of them. A little more than five years ago the brothers went into the business of hotdog vending.
“I saw a vendor and ask him, do you need help ever and they give me application. A week later, twelve of us go to get our own carts.” He owns it outright now, and is proud.
Adbul is in his thirties, and is of modest height with warm brown skin. Abdul speaks in short sentences and there is humor and happiness smeared within them. “I am my own boss,” he says and pounds his chest. “I am free, and there is no pressure except for the weather.” We both look up but know today is not one of the days he’s talking about.
Abdul has his own spot behind the Flat Iron
building. He filled out a permit five
years ago and at that time no one was working the area. “It took six-seven months to get the
customers,” he says and then walks over to throw an Italian sausage onto the
blackened barbecue for a man in an expensive suit. The regular hotdogs and veggie dogs are most popular to his
customers, he explains when he comes back, some of whom come everyday. The most popular toppings he told me were
the “pickles, relish, sauerkraut, and onion,” but when I asked him what he
liked on his hotdog, he replied, “hot peppers, ketchup, hot mustard and
a little relish. I like it hot.” And I
think he was talking about more than the hotdogs after the previous day’s rain.
He offers me a soda and tells me his first jobs
in Canada were working with sewing machines and for Knob Hill Farms and he
liked them. “If you work hard, then the
boss will like you,” he says with earnest simplicity. He has another job as a pizza maker and he likes that one too
because “I am the boss there, no one give me problems, I work hard.”
Abdul respects his work and he’s friendly and
polite with the customers. He said many
of the vendors were not friendly because they were probably afraid of Social
Services and getting their picture on television, but not him. “I just want to see my picture in the
paper,” he says and laughs.
He tells me of a restaurant that serves authentic
Afghani food. “It’s called Chopan Kebob
at Danforth and Jones,” and then squeezes in, “right next to my other hotdog
stand at Danforth and Woodbine.”
He lights the cigarette of a homeless man who had walked up and after he left, we talk about how that man was probably Canadian and here was Abdul, the foreigner, helping him. He is happy to do it.
“It costs nothing to be friendly,” he reminds me.
When asked what he would like his customers to
know, he replied, “It is fast and cheap, and they can sit here in the
park. It is good for the people from
the offices. Even I like it,” he says
with his already familiar smile. “And
when I like it, I think the people like it too.” And I was getting the feeling he was talking about more than just
hotdogs.