Khadija Al Ali no longer has a home in the Syrian city of Idlib. It is just rubble, along with the home that belonged to her parents.
She lost so much in Syria – her husband, her brother and everything she owned. Now she lives in Coventry, a war widow with four children, 3,000 miles from home.
And today, like yesterday, Khadija, 36, is baking bread at Proof Bakery.
“100 sourdough loaves, 10 trays of focaccia, four trays of buns,” she laughs.
Most will go to Coventry foodbank, part of a massive operation that will soon be supplying 500 artisan loaves a week to go with food parcels made up by the Trussell Trust.
The number of families coming to Coventry foodbank has tripled since lockdown began.
Proof Bakery’s response is just one of those from hundreds of communities, as the Government continues to face a barrage of criticism for failing to act on child hunger.
“We are very busy, but I like to work,” Khadija says.
“I grew up making flatbreads, but I don’t like to make them now without a fire. The kids even ask me to make focaccia and sourdough at home.”
She sprinkles the loaves with za’atar, a blend of Middle Eastern spices, seeds and sumac, or serves them with hot pepper Muhammara to remind her of Idlib, where her family grew olives to produce oil.
Watching a Syrian refugee take part in the massive human effort to feed millions of UK families in a week when a family of migrants perished in the English Channel feels particularly poignant.
Rasul Iran Nezhad and Shiva Mohammad Panahi were Iranian Kurds just a year younger than Khadija, and the children who drowned with them – Anita, nine, and Armin, six – are similar ages to her kids.
The couple’s youngest child, 15-month-old Artin, is also believed to be drowned.
Shiva and her family can only have felt that an overloaded dinghy in high winds was a better option than the life they were escaping. But Khadija and her children had an option that is rarely available to refugees – a safe and legal route to the UK.
Identified as particularly at risk by the United Nations, they came here as part of the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme.
Khadija was so frightened of leaving that she almost didn’t get on the plane.
She arrived in Coventry in the winter of 2016 speaking no English and with four children traumatised by the death of their father, and who had also escaped a house fire.
“The days were so short and we got lost in the dark,” she says. “My children had to tell me when to get off the bus. I was confused by everything.”
Her resettlement worker and neighbours, Afghan and British, helped Khadija
find her feet. She got work as a cleaner.
Then she found salvation in sourdough. After graduating from training, Khadija won a job as a baker and has since been promoted to Head of Kitchen.
She has passed her driving test, bought a car and gone up three levels from English Entry 1 to Level 1. One of her colleagues is another Syrian Kurdish war widow now leading the training programme.
Proof Bakery was the brainchild of Chernise Neo, a charity fundraiser and sourdough obsessive who in 2016 gave a volunteer breadmaking class at Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre.
“It was a lightbulb moment,” she says.
“I realised the women were all excellent bakers already. Despite speaking very little English they were still able to show me the different ways they shaped bread.”
As she produced a proving basket, she watched the reaction of one woman, who spoke no English at all.
“Her eyes lit up” with a connection to home, perhaps the first thread she had found back to Syria.
The experience inspired Chernise to set up the sourdough bakery as an online social business where people could order loaves made by refugee women.
She soon added Middle Eastern-inspired treats like basbousa cake, and ran online sourdough and Syrian biscuit-making classes.
But then lockdown happened, and it was hard for customers to collect.
Chernise realised that at the same time there were many more people struggling – and asked regular buyers to donate loaves to the local foodbank. More reliable funding followed that has expanded the operation to hit 500 loaves a week.
“So, it is our wonderfully supportive customers who are donating the loaves, which we bake, and which keeps our bakers in the jobs that they have worked so hard to attain,” Chernise says.
“It’s great to know our loaves are incredibly nutritious, but most importantly I hope they also bring people joy.”
While Khadija is stretching dough in Coventry, Lord Dubs, himself a former child refugee, is speaking in the House of Lords to ask the Government to provide safe passage for child refugees, to help stop a repeat of the tragedy this week in the Channel.
Khadija’s experience is living proof of how much those who are given that chance of safety have to offer all of us.
- If you want to learn Syrian baking skills visit proofbakery.co.uk/classes
