I first met the baker at MegaMart, a grocery store close to our home in Juffair. Every Sunday, when we went shopping, there he was. Big white moustache and wearing a little white cap, mixing chocolate chips, macadamia nuts and minuscule marshmallows to make the best cookies in the world - or at least in Bahrain. So every Sunday we bought a box of cookies, which didn’t last very long.

One day I just had to ask him if he was indeed the creator of that risk factor responsible for the circumferential menace in which my belly was being transformed into. He just nodded and, as any good bakery groupie would, I reached out my hand to congratulate him. My husband laughed, but I managed to get a free cookie, still warm from the oven. 

Another day, driving by American Alley, we ran into the baker and his little white cap, riding his bike (an old one), with a plastic bag from MegaMart on the handlebar - and on the wrong side of the road, of course. I felt sorry for the baker in all his humility and wondered what he was taking in that bag. Recipes? A couple hundred fills? Moustache dye? When my husband said it could have been the broken cookies from that day’s work, my heart crumbled like a biscuit hitting the floor. 

I would rather think that the little bag enclosed the good will to mix the dough, the wisdom to sweeten the mixture, the adventure to test the oven’s temperature, the laughter to sprinkle chocolate chips. The bag was not very big, so he must have carried strictly necessary items only. A few, but special ingredients that make up the recipe of a good baker.