Naz

The shining beacon of my disenchanted retail existence, a Turkish rude boy with a heart of the most precious platinum, gold and cushion cut Swarovski.

We shared a mutual love of sour candies, and on our breaks from work or when we got bored of putting t-shirts on hangers, we bought Pic’n’Mix bags from Woolworths or mini Haribos from the off-license to surreptitiously share. I had Sour Patch Kids and Sour Cherry Blasters shipped out from Canada and when he got hooked he would trek down to the Canadian market off Leicester Square and pay double the price for a bag of Fuzzy Peaches.

On sunny summer days, we had lunch in Notting Hill parks, drinking Strongbow, smoking cigarettes and eating Walker’s Ready Salted crisps. He would outline his plan to built a house in Turkey and move there with his girlfriend, renting it out in the summer to maintain his life in the UK, preferably selling fake Nike sneakers and knockoff designer bags at the Portobello Market. With his former experience in stolen cell phone dealing, he already knows his way around the business a bit.

One afternoon he watched a child plummet fourteen stories from a kitchen window of a council flat. He died on impact at Nazmi’s feet. He explained to me later that he had been retrieving a parcel of oily black hashish from his Kappa sock, and the stooping motion had prevented him from being hit by the falling boy. He didn’t really feel like smoking after that.