I lost my Arab spice merchant the same way. He had a small shop in a middle eastern mall they had placed in an old factory. The mall had impressive greengrocers, halal butchers, restaurants and my spice merchant who had any spice you could ever want in his small shop. When you bought spices he would always tell you about their medicinal properties and give you the recipe for how to use it to cure various ailments.

Then one day the landlord decided that all those small immigrant shops were not paying enough rent and kicked them out. Today the building is full of chain gyms.

Some of the shops moved to another mall placed in a housing project with a large non-white population. The mall was built for western high street shops but has become home to small middle eastern immigrant shops. It’s the best place to go for vegetables, spices and a cheap haircut. Now the city and the housing association are planning to knock down that mall as part of an “urban renewal” project to “revitalise” the area by replacing the current residents with whiter and richer ones.

Capitalism is a conspiracy to make us eat boring unseasoned food.