Think. Smile. Thank. Appreciate. Because even the simplest meal is never simple at all.
- Under the golden light of Stockholm, surrounded by art and flavors and centuries of human and natural effort — the friends truly understood: this dinner was not just an event. It was a constellation of choices, labors, elements, and love.
By Abdullah Usman Morai | Sweden
It was an early summer evening in Stockholm, June 2025. The air was golden, light drifting through the birch trees that lined the cobbled streets, and there was a certain sweetness in the breeze — the kind that makes people pause just a second longer before stepping inside.
A group of friends stood outside a warmly lit restaurant tucked into a quiet lane near Södermalm. They’d been planning this evening for weeks — some might say months. But the truth was, this dinner had been in the making for far longer.
The restaurant was nestled in a converted 19th-century brick building that had once served as a printing press. Its outer walls were still marked with faint impressions of its past—worn signage, wrought iron balconies, and high arched windows. The red bricks bore the patina of a century, and ivy curled quietly along the eastern wall, making it feel like the building itself breathed memory.
Inside the restaurant, the lights glowed amber, soft jazz played from speakers hidden behind flowerpots, and the walls were decorated with vibrant paintings — abstractions of life in motion, brushstrokes echoing rivers, people, fields, and journeys. One particular painting hung across their table: a scene of a wheat field at sunset with a single human figure standing alone, perhaps a farmer, back turned, gazing at the vastness. None of the friends knew the artist, but all felt something from it.
They settled around a polished oak table, thick and strong, wood grains telling quiet stories. The menus had already been discussed to exhaustion in their group chat: roasted lamb marinated with rosemary and garlic, grilled vegetable skewers brushed with olive oil, lentil soup slow-cooked with cumin and onions, fresh garden salad with sun-dried tomatoes, a bottle of aged Australian red wine, sparkling water, dessert and cups of tea and coffee for afterward. Everyone had their preferences and dietary considerations, but somehow, it all came together.
There was Alex, a Swedish environmental engineer; Mira, an Iranian art student; Oscar, a Colombian anthropologist; Sofia, an Italian-Swedish writer; and among them was Shahbaz, a soft-spoken man from Sindh, Pakistan, who worked at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. They all laughed, sipped, and talked — unaware that this dinner was not just a result of their choices but a culmination of invisible hands across the world.
A Year and a Half Earlier
January 2024 – A Farmer in Sindh
On a winter morning near the Rohri Canal in Sindh, Pakistan, a man named Murad Khan bent down in his wheat fields, inspecting the frost-bitten tips. The Rabi season was in full swing, and wheat had to be cared for tenderly. He had woken up before dawn, offered prayer, and walked to the fields with a thermos of tea and a heart full of hope. He could not have imagined that some of the wheat he nurtured — when ground and exported — would thicken a lentil soup in a restaurant in Stockholm.
Murad had never been to Europe, but he believed in his work. The soil was generous if you were kind to it, he often said. His wife, Yasmeen, was tending to her small vegetable patch near the courtyard — tomatoes, coriander, eggplants — crops that would end up on someone’s plate, somewhere, someday.
Further down the canal, another farmer named Shafiq Ahmed was checking on his sugarcane field. The stalks had grown tall under the Sindhi sun, rustling like whispers. By the end of the season, they’d be cut, crushed, boiled into syrup, dried into crystals — and some of that sugar would eventually sweeten the dessert for this very dinner in Stockholm. A caramel sauce here, a fruit tart there — all touched by cane grown under Shafiq’s gaze.
June 2024 – A Vineyard in Barossa Valley, Australia
Miles away, under the southern sun, Aiden MacLeod walked through rows of his vineyard in South Australia. The grapes that would become the wine for that Stockholm dinner were already hanging heavy. The vintage was promising. Aiden believed in aging well, in giving time its due credit.
He laughed when he recalled a conversation with his grandfather: “Good wine is like good stories—they both need to ferment before they’re shared.”
Spring 2024 – A Coffee Farm in Ethiopia
In the highlands of Ethiopia, in a village near Sidama, a man named Kidane loaded sacks of coffee cherries into a cart. His fingers were stained, and his back ached, but he whistled a soft tune. The beans he harvested were destined for Europe and North America. He did not know who would drink them, only that someone would, and hopefully, they’d feel awake and alive afterward.
His wife, Alem, sorted dried leaves for tea beside him, carefully separating the best leaves from the average ones. “Even a leaf has dignity,” she often told her children.
They also grew fruits — mangoes, bananas, papayas — some of which would be exported in refrigerated containers across continents. Their sweetness would end up complementing cheese platters and dessert menus. In Stockholm, Mira would bite into a slice of juicy mango, unaware it had been plucked by Alem’s eldest son six months earlier.
A Factory in Portugal – Spring 2024
In northern Portugal, near Porto, plates were spinning through a ceramic factory line. Clara, a 45-year-old factory worker, packed them with care. One of those white, minimal plates with a delicate glaze would be placed in front of Sofia the writer, holding her grilled vegetables. Clara never met Sofia, but her work gave the meal form.
Spoons, napkins, water glasses, dessert forks, even the sugar bowls for tea — all were birthed in factories like these — faceless hands crafting comfort, silently.
An Artist’s Studio – December 2023, Tehran
Mira, before she came to Sweden, had met an artist named Babak in Tehran. He was nearly sixty, worked quietly, and rarely left his studio. That painting on the restaurant wall — the one with the wheat field and the solitary figure — was his.
He had painted it after dreaming of his late father, a farmer. “We are always standing in someone else’s harvest,” he had told Mira.
The painting had traveled via a gallery to Stockholm, then to the restaurant owner, who hung it without knowing the full story.
A Dessert Kitchen in Southern Italy – Autumn 2024
In a modest patisserie near Naples, Lucia was stirring a pan of custard slowly over low heat. Her family had been making desserts for generations. Almond flour, vanilla from Madagascar, cane sugar from South Asia, and a variety of seasonal fruits were her daily palette. One of her tart recipes — delicate fruit atop creamy filling, held in a buttery crust — had made its way into a Scandinavian adaptation on that very night’s dessert menu.
And the whipped cream served alongside? Made possible by cows tended to in the pastures of southern Sweden, milked at dawn, processed at a local dairy plant, and shipped in the early morning to the restaurant.
A Forest Long Ago – Latvia, 1980s
Decades earlier, a forest had grown thick and tall in Eastern Europe. Managed responsibly, its trees were later harvested for timber. Some of that timber ended up in Sweden. The oak table around which the friends now sat was carved from it, its rings silently recording seasons, decades, laughter, and storms.
That forest had never seen lightbulbs or forks or friendships — but it had offered itself quietly, like the rest of the world, waiting to be appreciated.
A Culinary School in France – 2015
Ten years earlier, a young woman named Emma Johansson from Uppsala, Sweden, stood nervously in the halls of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. She had left everything behind — family, certainty, even language — to chase her passion for cooking.
Emma learned how to knead, simmer, sear, and plate. But more than anything, she learned humility: that the best chefs are not creators but connectors — linking the earth to the eater, time to taste, memory to moment.
In 2020, she returned to Sweden and took a job as head chef at a quiet but respected restaurant in Stockholm — the very one where this dinner now unfolded. She had designed the menu herself. For every flavor, she had a reason. For every dish, a story. She believed that food is not just fuel — it’s a thank-you to the world.
That night, as the dishes left her kitchen, she stood quietly behind the counter, wiping her hands, smiling gently as she watched people taste what she and so many others had made possible.
The Servers – Present Night, Stockholm
At the front of the house was Tomas, a Lithuanian Swedish university student working part-time to support his studies in urban planning. His posture was upright, his timing perfect. He had memorized the allergy notes, the wine pairings, and the subtle quirks of regular guests.
Beside him, Noor, originally from Morocco, had moved to Sweden a few years earlier. She had a background in psychology, but for now, she served tables with warmth and grace. She had a way of placing a plate that made it feel like a gift. She didn’t just serve food; she brought presence.
The servers glided between tables like dancers in a quiet performance. Their feet ached, their shifts were long, but their touch completed the orchestra of the evening.
Back to the Dinner Table – Stockholm, June 2025
The lentil soup arrived first. Thick, warm, slightly spiced. Shahbaz took a slow sip and smiled.
“It reminds me of my mother’s daal,” he said, his voice soft.
Everyone nodded. There was something comforting in it. The meat was tender, the wine smooth, the vegetables perfectly charred. Laughter flowed like the water they sipped, and when the coffee arrived, it was dark and strong — a quiet punctuation mark to a long paragraph of flavors.
Then came dessert: a trio of offerings.
A slice of fruit tart with mango, peach, and berries — sweetened just right with raw sugar. Small bowls of panna cotta topped with caramel sauce.
Fresh strawberries and cherries are served with whipped cream and mint leaves.
As they tasted, the flavors brought smiles of pure gratitude. They may not have known the names of those who made it all possible, but they could feel their presence.
At one point, Sofia looked up at the painting and said, “Isn’t it funny how we just sit here and eat, but this moment has been years in the making?”
Oscar, the anthropologist, grinned. “It’s like we’re sitting at the final page of a book that thousands of people have written.”
“And nature too,” said Alex. “The sun, the rain, the soil, the seasons.”
“I wonder if any of those people — people-the ones who grew or made all this—know they’re part of this moment,” Mira said.
Shahbaz gently stirred his tea. “They may not know this exact moment… but they believe in the chain. In doing their part. In Faith.”
The Closing Moment
As the evening drew to a close, Shahbaz raised his teacup.
“To everyone who touched this meal — whether with their hands or their hearts,” he said.
Everyone joined in. There were no toasts of grandeur, only small, sincere nods of acknowledgment.
And in that instant — under the golden light of Stockholm, surrounded by art and flavors and centuries of human and natural effort — the friends truly understood: this dinner was not just an event. It was a constellation of choices, labors, elements, and love.
It had taken a thousand hands and a million moments.
Next time they would eat — even if it was just toast and tea — they would remember.
Think. Smile. Thank. Appreciate.
Because even the simplest meal is never simple at all.
Read: The Price of a Daughter
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Abdullah Soomro, penname Abdullah Usman Morai, hailing from Moro town of Sindh, province of Pakistan, is based in Stockholm Sweden. Currently he is working as Groundwater Engineer in Stockholm Sweden. He did BE (Agriculture) from Sindh Agriculture University Tando Jam and MSc water systems technology from KTH Stockholm Sweden as well as MSc Management from Stockholm University. Beside this he also did masters in journalism and economics from Shah Abdul Latif University Khairpur Mirs, Sindh. He is author of a travelogue book named ‘Musafatoon’. His second book is in process. He writes articles from time to time.
