Christian opens first café in Syrian suburb

Cities are full of cafés and restaurants. In Ibrin, a suburb of Damascus in Syria, there wasn’t one – until a local Christian recently returned to open the town’s sole café.

The Syria conflict began in 2011. A year later Joseph Hakimeh, his wife and three children were forced to flee Irbin, just a few of the thousands of Syrian Christians then internally displaced.

‘That period was very hard, we didn’t know what to do or where to go,’ Joseph remembers. ‘I studied electrical infrastructure, but I couldn’t find a good job. We went through tough times.’

Six years after Irbin was captured by rebels, he returned to discover the town he once called home destroyed. ‘My heart was grieving,’ he says. ‘Yet I promised myself I would come back. I also thought I should open a restaurant, as there was no such place in the whole area.

‘As soon as the road to Irbin was reopened I was on it,’ he continues, reflecting on the moment when the Syrian Government retook the town in 2018. Three years on, the Al Yousef café is now fully open.

‘It is a place for the youth to gather, to play games, to watch football and for families to have a nice dinner together,’ Joseph, now 42, explains. ‘Our space is also used for conferences. We’ve already had a doctor doing an educational conference for women. It is the only spacious hall in the city.’

For Joseph, the opening of the restaurant is but the first step. ‘I would love Irbin to be restored to how it was before the war. I was born here, as was my entire family. The town is very family friendly. The church taught us loyalty and care. I was raised this way and I want my children to experience this too. I am now very hopeful for the future.’

Joseph’s new café is one of over 1,700 income-generating projects established as part of the Open Doors’ Hope for the Middle East campaign.