Stationery Store Faces Squeeze

by Mary Camper-Titsingh

On January 19th there was a sign on the door of the Roosevelt Island Stationers Store: Shop is closed for Muslim holiday. You can pay me later. The newspapers were unattended and neatly arranged on a trestle in front of the shop's closed door.

That's the kind of friendliness and courtesy that Island residents have come to appreciate about Ali Khan, the Stationery Shop's Manager.

"Have you noticed how worried Ali looks lately?" a friend asked me recently. She also buys a daily newspaper at the shop. I had seen the uncharacteristically drawn and sad look on Ali's broad face, though he always smiles a friendly hello whenever I see him.

"Are you OK?" I asked him. "I'm worried about keeping the store open," he confessed. "I'm having trouble meeting my rent. Since I had to let one of my helpers go I'm working seven days a week here."

Ali explained that with the expanded supermarket on the Island selling greeting cards, what used to be his best business is now practically dead. "They sell nearly every single thing I have in my shop. When we opened this shop many years ago, we were promised the exclusive right to sell greeting cards and stationery here. But they have now gone back on that promise."

The Stationers shop, which opens at 6:30 a.m. on weekdays and at 7:00 a.m. on Sundays, sells much more than greeting cards and stationery. Adults come in for newspapers, cigarettes, lottery tickets, gift items and wrappings, and magazines. But, "We don't sell dirty magazines," the devout Muslim told me. Children crowd around the candy and school-supplies counters every weekday before and after school. "We had to remove the video game machines that we formerly had in the back of the store, too many arguments and fights over them."

Ali Khan was born in Hyderabad, India. He was nine years old when his father died, leaving a large family poverty-stricken. As a young man Ali traveled across the Arabian Sea to Oman to seek work, but work in a gas station was all that was available to him. "Oh, the terrible heat that radiated from the adjacent highway," Ali exclaimed as he remembered life in that country along the coast of southeast Arabia.

In 1984 an older brother living in the United States agreed to be his sponsor so that Ali could obtain the necessary "green card" to be able to work in this country.

Ali and his wife, Ayesha, have three children: a son, Zakir, age 10, and two daughters, Hafsa, age 7, who is named after the prophet Mohammed's wife, and Hajira, age 3, after the prophet Abraham's wife. Ali told me that both the Old and New Testament prophets figure in the Islamic religion. "But we believe that Mohammed was the last and final prophet and we follow his teachings of total submission to the will of God. That is what being a Muslim means.

"Those people in other parts of the world who blow up buildings and kill innocent people are terrorists, they are giving good Muslims a bad name." During Islam's holy month of Ramadan, "we cleanse our souls by fasting and prayer." A Festival called Eid is celebrated on the last day of Ramadan. It fell on January 19th this year - that's why the Stationers Shop was closed.

"Are all of your helpers from India too?", I asked him. "All except one. I'm sure you've seen Wesley Koval, who works here on Saturdays and Sundays putting the newspapers together. He began to work here six years ago as a very young boy. Now he is a tall teenager and a very reliable and good worker. I'm afraid it will be a few years before my 10-year-old son, Zakir, will be able to come and help me in the shop," he said.

Then he added, looking worried again, "If I last that long."