A woman, nearby, was sitting in the only cracked wooden chair in view. She had no goods, no cupboards, no junk. She was repeating to herself some ancient language whose formula had not delivered what it was supposed to have.

"I am my father, my mother, myself," Ms. A translated for Abe as they walked by and came upon the mobile workshop of a poor tinsmith.

The tinsmith's space was cluttered with broken metal pipes, frying pans with holes in them, bent gutters, graters of all kinds, and watering cans with pieces of oddly shaped utensils stuffed inside them.

No one was stopping at the portable workshop but the tinsmith was not distracted. Instead, he continued to beat and hammer and twist and file and solder and sweat...