Celebrating at a dinner cooked by refugees

The moment she mentioned Lesbos, the room grew quiet. The group of a dozen people had splintered off about halfway through dinner to converse about life in Berlin and about the food we were grazing on. But now Hend, 37, wearing glasses and a gray hijab, had the stage. She was about to reveal what everyone at this dinner party was most curious about: What was it like for her to journey from Syria to Germany?

This was no ordinary dinner party. Twice a month Anna Gyulai Gaal, a Hungarian-born journalist, turns her apartment in the Neukoelln district of Berlin into a supper club through the dining service WithLocals.com, and calls the get-togethers Refugee Dinners. Her friends and strangers alike sign up and pay 35 euros ($40) to partake in a multicourse feast that goes beyond the plate and the palate.

The cooks are Syrian refugees, women who have just arrived in Berlin after making the arduous trek across the Mediterranean and through Europe. Because of their refugee status, the cooks are not allowed to work and earn money, so Gyulai Gaal gives them the money she earns from the dinners.

Guests mingle with the cooks, hearing about the uprooted lives of people most have only read and heard about in the news: life in the refugee camps, what they left behind in Syria and, what the voyage was like to get to Germany.

“We were walking on a road in Lesbos, a long line of refugees in front of us and behind us,” said Hend, who requested on behalf of the group that only their first names be used. “Suddenly a car stopped and they offered us food.”

Her mother, Ferial, sitting next to her, continued: “I said to the people in the car: ‘We don’t need food. We need a ride to the nearest police station so we can register as refugees.’ They reminded us it was illegal to pick up refugees but they took us anyway.”

“And they were German,” Hend said. “My mother later said, ‘See, that’s a good sign.’”

Gyulai Gaal started the dinners with Boryana Ivanova, a Bulgarian-born refugee activist.

“I realized one day that the newcomers — I don’t like the word ‘refugees’ — need to interact with locals. Integration can only begin by an initial meeting,” said Gyulai Gaal, fanning her arm across the room where the dinner party was in full swing.

For the diners, the appeal is to connect with people, going beyond the headlines.

“I was looking forward to the dinner and had various questions,” Samantha Tite Webber, an American student living in Berlin, said after the dinner. But, she realized, her hosts “are probably glad to have the chance to relax and share a bit of their homeland with us in the form of wonderfully prepared food.”

The five Syrian women (as well as a 12-year-old girl) showed up to start cooking three hours before the guests arrived. By the time everyone was there — a Hungarian, two Greeks, three Americans and a German — they had laid out a feast of Syrian and Middle Eastern dishes, including tabbouleh salad, lamb-and-rice-stuffed grape leaves and bazalya, a mixture of minced lamb, beef, peas, carrots and cashews. The star of the show, though, was rgaga, sometimes called borgaga — a chicken and caramelized onion pie from southern Syria.

Gyulai Gaal’s dinners aren’t the only events in Berlin that celebrate collaboration with refugees. The nonprofit group Give Something Back to Berlin puts on the Refugee Cooking Group, weekly dinners where Berliners and the newly arrived cook together, chat and share stories. Uber den Tellerrand organizes cooking classes led by Syrian and Afghani refugees in the Schoenebergdistrict. There are also guided walking tours of the Arabic and Turkish-dominated Neukoelln put on by the organization Querstadtein, led by refugees.

“For us,” Hend said, “we get the benefit of leaving the refugee camp.”

Wahida, 55, turned to Hend (who was translating) and said, “We can leave when we want, but coming to Anna’s feels like a second home to us.”

Hugs and email addresses were exchanged. In two weeks they would be back here in their “second home,” pleasing the palates of a new set of hungry people.

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