What would Long Street be without Mohammed?

“What would Long Street be without Mohammed?” reads a crumpled white A4 piece of paper clinging to the tiled walls on the corner of Bloem Street and Long Street for the last 10 years.

You can smell Mohammed Alame from the other end of Long Street. Well, actually, you can smell his caramelized onions, sizzling boerewors rolls, burgers and falafels. But I have never seen him personally pick up a pair of tongs. He supervisors two women cooking while he sits on a plastic garden chair to the left of the stall, watching and smiling as people pass by. Like a dictator, he claims the secret to his success is “My mouth. My tasting. Everything is under my control.”

His large gas stove sits on a faded floral brown carpet. I would love to imagine he flew on this carpet to South Africa from his home in South Lebanon, but he actually bought it at a car-boot sale in Johannesburg. Traditional Lebanese music blares out of an old tape player. A blue lantern on the table lights up an array of fresh bananas, grapes and oranges, but they are just for decoration, a sharp contrast to his cholesterol-in-a-roll menu. I have never seen a street vendor care for aesthetics the way Mohammed does. Sometimes a “lucky lady” may receive a grape or two.

Mohammed has every sauce known to mankind it seems; hot chili, tomato, mayonnaise, barbeque, chutney, sweet chili and a few others which cant be identified. His red chili sauce sends me into hallucinations, sends my eyes watering and I fear its growing hairs on my chest.

A woman with nose rings and a belly piercing runs over and kisses Mohammed on the cheek and sits on his lap. It's not a problem, he's divorced. But does she know the knee she is sitting on is a prosthetic, after his leg was amputated from the knee down some years ago. He says it was because of standing too much with chronic diabetes. “Do you remember me?” she asks excitedly as her friends wait. “Yes my dear, your hair has grown long,” says Mohammed. She leaves chuffed with a greasy boerewors roll in hand and oil dripping down her arms. Mohammed really did remember her, he tells me she used to work in the Mexican kitchen down the road but moved to India two years ago. He lights a cigarette.

Mohammed is wearing a fishing jacket and has black, oily, shoulder length hair which curls at the ends. In his shirt pocket he carries a comb “for the windy days.” Around his neck is a red whistle which he uses when drunken people get rowdy. But like a true dictator he shows no fear; “The are scared of me, I will mour them!”

Like Starlin, Hussien, Hitler and all great dictators, he has a thick black moustache which also receives the combs attention. Also like a dictator, he's obsessed with control. He says this is what keeps him ahead of the other five street food vendors on Long Street. “I prepare everything. Everything is under my control.”

* This article was written by an Independent Newspapers journalism trainee as part of the company's cadet training programme.