When Najat Alkmamees was a housewife in Baghdad – looking after her husband, a teacher, and their children – she often spent time in her garden.
She would tend to the chickens, a source of eggs and meat, and luxuriate among her plants and trees: hibiscus, pistachio, okra, aubergine. “I wouldn’t buy anything from outside,” she says. “I made everything from pickles to pastries.”
That peaceful existence ended when Alkmamees, now 72, opened an envelope in the post. Inside was a bullet and a list of names, including her 18-year-old son. Scrawled on a note was two words: “Leave or otherwise.”
Tragedy followed. In 2007, Alkmamees and her husband were viciously beaten by masked men in their home. That same year her son-in-law was kidnapped (presumed dead; his whereabouts remain unknown) and her brother-in-law murdered. Last year, her sister and nephew were gunned down in the street.
Fleeing for their lives, the family scattered around the world. Alkmamees and two daughters found asylum in Australia; two other daughters went to Sweden; and her son ended up in America. With no right to travel, Alkmamees, now a widow, has not seen her children since they were separated.
“Before my husband passed away, he asked me to look after our son,” she says, wiping away tears and banging her hand against her leg in frustration. A bright gold charm bracelet, decorated with tags bearing the names of each of her children, rattles. “What’s killing me now is that I cannot make this happen.”
For all her pain (“I eat and cry, I sleep and cry”) Alkmamees has found some kind of sanctuary – in a community garden in Fairfield, western Sydney, where she lives. Unable to speak a word of English, she grows vegetables and fruits, and reaps the rewards, taking some home and selling others to make a few dollars.
Alkmamees is one of several refugees who attend the Parents Café, a social enterprise located in the grounds of Fairfield high school. This weekend she will sing an Iraqi song as one of myriad performers at Little Baghdad: Cafes and Gardens, put on by Powerhouse Youth Theatre (PYT) Fairfield, the group behind Sydney Opera House parkour show Jump First, Ask Later and acclaimed Sydney festival show Tribunal.
The evening, held on March 16-17 and 23-24, takes the form of an Iraqi dinner party. Guests are invited to sit down on Persian rugs in the garden, where they will be regaled with stories. Meanwhile, slam poets will perform in a mud hut (traditionally found in rural Iraq); homemade bread will be served hot out of the garden oven; and violinists will play. The night will end with the dabka, an Arab folk dance.
“It’s about saying we have these stories but don’t feel sorry for us,” says the PYT Fairfield artistic director, Karen Therese, speaking during rehearsals. Performers, dressed in intricate gowns and elaborate gold headdresses sewn by women in the Parents Café, bang drums and stamp their feet, laughing.
Therese wants to engineer conversations: to allow Sydneysiders to meet refugees and to show them they are valued despite negative coverage. “Politicians get up on TV and say: ‘We don’t want refugees!’” bemoans Therese. “A lot of refugees won’t interact with other Australians because they think that [Australians] won’t like them and they don’t want them here.”
Food, she adds, is a “strategy” to get people together. “It’s about coming to have a cup of tea with a stranger and understanding a culture [while] bringing down those boundaries and fear of the unknown.”
Critically, the substantial Iraqi immigrant population in Fairfield (which is sometimes known as Little Bagdad) will make up a percentage of the audience, too. Meanwhile, the entertainment dished up alongside the tabbouleh, falafel and baklava will mix the traditional with the contemporary in the form of urban poetry and art. As co-curator Jiva Parthipan puts it, “it’s a shared space”.
Hanging over the evening, however, is a sense of urgency: launched in 2010, the Parents Café – which has been celebrated by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees as a role model for settlement – is now facing closure. If founder and manager Haitham Jaju cannot find an extra $150,000 in funding it will have to shut down in the next three months. Termination letters have already been handed to staff.
For those who rely on it, closure spells disaster. Confusingly, the Parents Café is not a real café (although Iraqis do come to chew the fat and drink tea). Its main purpose is community building and education for newly arrived adults from war-torn countries: as well as the garden, a commercial kitchen and thriving catering business, workshops are offered in everything from English language to sewing and computer skills.
Jaju, 51, a former Iraqi diplomat who sought asylum with his wife and three children in 2006, knows what it is like to arrive in a new country with nothing. A government envoy at home, here he worked the nightshift at Woolworths stacking shelves. Founding the Parents Café was a way to reduce a sense of profound isolation.
“Refugee women who don’t speak English can’t just go out and get a bus – [even the smallest of tasks are] profoundly complicated,” explains Therese. “So bringing them into a group where they feel safe, rather than sitting at home below the poverty line, is important. They couldn’t call it ‘women’s support service’ as they wouldn’t come – they’re very proud people. So they said, let’s call it a café. And all the women came.”
Locating the Parents Cafe in a school was also a deliberate move: while refugees wouldn’t necessarily trust other organisations “they know what a school is,” says Jaju. “There is a familiarity.” And while children find it easier to assimilate, their parents are often left behind.
No-nonsense Iraqi immigrant Layla Naji, who will play the role of narrator during Little Baghdad: Cafes and Gardens and works in disability employment, insists that the Parents Café is “a way of life, a way of work, a way of income. People are traumatised from war: it’s a way of getting away from your depression, your anxiety. We are trying to change people’s lives.”
Alkmamees still feels far away from her family. But: “I am so thankful to God and to Australia because now I am here.” Fairfield may not be Iraq, and the Parents Café garden may not be filled with the pomegranate trees of her home in Baghdad. Yet at least “I have activities to fill my days with”. As she says: “I love the garden as if it is my temple.”
• Little Baghdad: Cafes and Gardens is at the Parents Café at at Fairfield High School, Sydney, from 16 to 24 March
