Come Dine With Me
It is almost one year ago now that Ahmad and I met for the first time. A lot of time has passed, but at first sight not so many things seem to have changed. Let’s see where the story takes us this time, which unforeseen doors we will open, and in which unexpected rooms we will find ourselves.
The first door we are opening today is the door to Ahmad’s dinner table. I ask him what he thinks about Irish food, but it seems unnecessary to repeat his answer.
Despite living in Mosney (Direct Provision Centre Co. Meath, Ireland) for over a year now, Ahmad and his wife have been able to organize affluent dinners to invite friends and acquaintances. One person he has invited to taste the richness of the Syrian cuisine is his friend Bran. Bran is from Ireland, he works as an attorney and comes to Mosney from time to time to help people with legal issues and paper work. Ahmad himself knows how much time can be swallowed up by bureaucracy. His name was misspelled in his new passport, and they got his date of birth wrong as well. He showed me how they spelled his name in his papers: “I cannot even pronounce it,” he says.
Bran has been to Syria himself and has seen the situation in Damascus with his own eyes. “I like talking to Bran,” Ahmad tells me, “he knows about the history of Syria. We talk about the war and life, and he explains Ireland to me. Always when I talk to him he makes me feel very happy.” The last time they talked his hometown Haram had just been bombed. “I can talk to him about my problems. I want to go back to Syria and help, but he says no. No, I should stay in Ireland.” His mother and brother are still in Syria. His mother would like to come to Ireland, but she cannot. His brother earns money with a little market selling electronic equipment like computers and phones, but also works in an organisation that provides people with daily necessities such as food and water, and even tents for people to stay in and medicine and vaccine for children. “Before, it was very easy to get these things. But now the border with Turkey is closed and they don’t receive anything anymore.” Haram seems to have developed into a giant refuge for people fleeing from Aleppo and Idlib. “My town used to be 65 000, now it’s 500 000 people. People live in tents at the side of the street.”
Bran came to his house on Christmas, and of course he was pampered with the best of what the Syrian cooking has to offer. Ahmad made Yabrac - vine leaves stuffed with rice, meat, black pepper and chili - and Molokhia, which is a rice dish with chicken, the leaves of molokhia and of course spices of all kinds. After dinner he showed him a traditional Arabic dance. “He’s a good dancer,” he laughs, “but my room is very small.” A friend of his got engaged here in Mosney, and they were allowed to use the big hall where there was plenty of space for them to dance. “Ten years ago,” he tells me, “my brother got married. Men and women were allowed to dance together. Today that is not possible anymore.”
One day Al-Qaeda came to his home, took his brother, put him to prison and held him captive for two days. When he returned home, one of his eyes was so swollen that he was not able to see. They had come to his brother’s market and destroyed all the equipment. “They want the market for PCs and Wifi,” he explains.
The other day, Ahmad discloses to me, he woke up at 4 am with a terrible pain in his chest and he fainted. “We need an ambulance in GL50,” he heard someone say. His blood pressure was very high, so the nurses in the hospital told him he should stop talking to his family in Syria, it is causing him too much stress. “But do you still talk to your mother?” I ask him. “Oh yes, of course! But now, every time I talk to her, I say ‘Please, mother, don’t tell me about the war’.”
