‘tell me I was here’ will be available as a paperback and ebook from 11 December 2025
Don’t feel like reading? Listen to me read this excerpt:
The small bell above the door frame announces Abdel’s arrival. Like a mountaineer who has just reached the summit, he takes a moment to admire the landscape in front of him. The old storehouse he has entered has been transformed into a sea of anything and everything. Multiple tables display a variety of items so diverse that one might almost be convinced this is an inventory of all objects anyone has ever come up with. The whole place smells old, but this particular smell is brimming with echoes of sensations and experiences, of pure aliveness flowing through the cracks of time.
Abdel makes his way through the entrance section, which features displays of old postcards, keyrings, seashells, and other holiday souvenirs. He picks up one of the cards and looks at the back: Greetings from Trieste, Antoine! Love, Celine. Abdel chuckles. He can’t think of a single scenario in which someone would want to purchase something like this. But that is exactly why he loves this place and Jonas, the person who runs it. The genius of the selection process is that there is none. People call Jonas when someone has passed away and the family don’t know what to do with most of their belongings. Jonas comes round, picks it all up and puts it up for sale in his shop, no matter what it is. Jerrycans filled with pesticide that expired in the mid-80s? Sure, you will find that here. Family portraits of people neither you nor anyone else in town remembers? Just over there. Weekly planners from the 70s with half the pages missing? Jonas has a whole cupboard full of them. And of course, postcards that have long fulfilled their mission of greeting someone and giving them love from someone else.
Abdel looks at the dusty card in his hand again. Greetings from Trieste, Antoine! Love, Celine. It is difficult to tell how old the card is. Are Antoine and Celine still alive? If yes, what is the nature of their relationship? Do they still send each other postcards, greeting each other, giving each other love? Or was that just Celine’s thing and Antoine could never be bothered to return the favour? And Celine, bless her, she put up with it for so long. It was important to her to give her love to Antoine, even when she was abroad. And he—well, he simply expressed his love in different ways; that is what she probably told herself. But there was always that part of her that longed for something, anything, to be given to her by Antoine. Just a little sign that he thought of her as she thought of him. And with each day, each month, each year that it did not come, another layer of hope peeled off Celine’s light blue eyes. But even so, she did not stop. Even as her heart crumbled between her fingers, she picked up the crumbs and gave every single one of them to Antoine. Did he know that she was disintegrating herself for him? Did he realise the preciousness of love? Or did he think of love as something like a washcloth, something so ordinary, so mundane that it barely warrants acknowledgement? Abdel needs to move on.
There are several areas in Jonas’s shop. While there is some attempt at sorting, a lot of the themes are quite loosely interpreted. Abdel can’t quite wrap his head around the reason for putting a garden hoe next to a sofa littered with patches, one of which appears to depict the flag of Corsica. But he is neither looking for tools nor furniture today. After walking past a wooden dining table overflowing with newspapers from the 80s and a frightening number of pots and pans stacked on top of the most structurally unstable bed he has ever seen, Abdel smiles excitedly as he reaches a small nook dedicated to a single theme: music.
While there are whole instruments on display, including several trumpets that look as if they had been used to lead Napoleon’s troops into battle and a piano so dilapidated the mere sight of it would probably have incinerated Sviatoslav Richter on the spot, there is another reason why this section is so dear to Abdel. Thanks to Jonas’s almost fanatical refusal to do any sort of curating, there are myriad bits and bobs that you would never find anywhere else, strewn around like little musical seeds.
Pieces of string, wood parts belonging to very specific instrument models, individual piano keys, and even a small bowl filled with vinyl needles. To most people, this ragtag selection would look like nothing more than a pile of junk, put on display in an almost offensive rebellion against its assigned destiny of being ground into dust. But to someone who knows what they are looking for, these tiny bits of things are golden puzzle pieces, each holding within itself the potential to infuse a different, bigger thing with life from a time long past.
Abdel scans the area around him until he spots a small shelf filled with all sorts of cymbals. He walks up to it and takes out some measuring tape he brought from home. One after another, he takes out the cymbals and carefully measures their diameters. As he repeatedly puts them to the side, he braces himself for resignation. But this growing feeling is utterly obliterated when the second-to-last cymbal reveals the magic number on Abdel’s measuring tape. He knows he is prone to making mistakes when he gets excited, so he double- and triple-checks. It is definitely a match.
Nothing in this place is straightforward, and this includes the payment process. Once you have found something amidst the sea of improbable items, there is one final quest to complete before you can leave the pocket universe you stumbled into, and that is to actually find Jonas. Unlike the staff working in some of the high street shops, Jonas does not rush to greet customers as soon as he so much as anticipates the ringing of the bell. He has no interest in convincing anyone to buy anything from him; in fact, Abdel sometimes gets the impression that he deliberately adds hurdles to the shopping process to ensure that customers are absolutely certain they want what they have chosen. Wandering around the maze of mess, Abdel tries to spot the signature bald head stuck on top of a sturdy little body in a cardigan. There is no point calling his name since Jonas tends to wear headphones while working.
From experience, Abdel knows that Jonas is usually busy doing one of three things. The first is putting new items on display or rearranging some of the tables. On days when more people are in, Jonas can be very easy to miss while doing this, because nothing about him suggests that he may have something to do with running the place. However, today Abdel is the only customer, and he is fairly certain that he would have spotted Jonas by now if he were in the main area.
The second option is that Jonas might be in the back rooms, sorting through boxes overflowing with belongings that bereaved family members could not wait to get rid of. To get to the back rooms, customers have to smother everything that has ever been socially ingrained in them and walk past the counter—which is really just another table packed to the edge with stuff, but with the notable inclusion of a small metal case that is never locked—and into a hallway that even the ghosts of the people who were clearly murdered in there are probably scared of.
He has ventured here before, so Abdel does not hesitate to penetrate the dark and check the two rooms opposite each other that lie directly behind the entryway. An oppressive number of boxes fill these spaces almost entirely, leaving only a narrow path for an eccentric shopkeeper to navigate between them. Each box has a note attached to it, proclaiming in almost chillingly ordinary handwriting the names of those whose material possessions have already joined them on a journey without return. After a brief inspection of both rooms, Abdel determines that Jonas is not here either.
This only leaves the final option. Whenever Jonas is not tending to the remains of dead people, you are almost guaranteed to find him in his office at the end of the hallway, taking care of the more administrative side of his business. Abdel walks further down the hallway, where he peers around an open door and—to his great relief—sees a familiar figure hunched over several manila folders. As expected, Jonas has his headphones in. For a brief moment, Abdel considers using the cymbal to get his attention before deciding that, actually, he would rather not be responsible for triggering a potentially fatal heart attack in the owner of Le Bazar du Grenier. Instead, he opts for the tried-and-tested slow approach combined with increasingly elaborate hand movements. After a brief interlude of awkward shuffling, Jonas finally looks up and takes his headphones out.
‘Ah, bonjour Abdel.’
‘Salut Jonas.’
Abdel knows that Jonas is not the kind of person interested in small talk, so he just holds up the cymbal and raises his eyebrows, making use of the interculturally acknowledged code for This please.
‘Just the cymbal?’
‘Yes, just the cymbal.’
Jonas squints at the shiny disc in Abdel’s hands, as if trying to decipher a price tag hidden somewhere within the object’s subatomic makeup.
‘Ten.’
Abdel could negotiate this price down if he wanted to. Haggling is very much a part of Jonas’s business model, and many of his customers take great joy in the process. But not only is Abdel not nearly assertive enough to negotiate anything, he also does not feel that haggling prices down would bring him any satisfaction. After all, Jonas is not some greedy business tycoon hell-bent on funding his wasteful lifestyle through the exploitation of the working class, but a reclusive local who is truly passionate about what he does and lives in a tiny flat above his shop.
‘Sounds great! Shall I just give you the money or…?’
‘Just put it in the till on your way out. Merci.’
And with the transaction thus complete, Jonas also considers this the end of the interaction, puts his headphones back in and returns to his manila folders. Abdel knows not to expect anything more after this point and makes his way back out of the hallway, clutching his cymbal like some sort of mystical shield.
Back at the counter, he opens up Jonas’s till and puts a €10 note inside. But just as he is about to leave, he glances at the cymbal. It is rather big, and Abdel has not brought a bag with him. Le Bazar du Grenier is not exactly the kind of shop that hands out flashy bags that transform you into a walking billboard for their brand. However, there is—of course—a whole table buried beneath a pile of bags made out of all sorts of materials.
Abdel rummages through a few until he finds a blue tote bag exclaiming in slightly awkward English France is a fucking fantastic. A bit weird, but the cymbal fits perfectly inside. For a second, Abdel hesitates. The normal process would be to bring this bag back to Jonas and ask him for the price. Abdel would never just take it and hope Jonas does not notice, but he also does not feel like walking back to his office and doing yet another round of shuffle-shuffle-bonjour-yes-this-please. After briefly considering his options, Abdel walks back to the till and throws another €2 coin in there. The bag is probably cheaper than that, but he would rather leave a small tip than underpay Jonas.
just thoughts 