A chain of love through food

We've been here for three years. It's not a big story before Old Fire Station, to be honest. We did some pop ups in Florence Park with success. But space in Oxford is very expensive. Jeremy, who was the Director, he lives in East Oxford. We know his wife. And we heard the café is empty. Other people were applying for it. We don't have any businesswomen in our team, you know? Myself, I’m a social worker - nothing to do with business at all. When I applied, I was thinking, ‘Why would they give it to us? We need a lot of support.’ I was very transparent. I tell them, ‘Look, we will need your help for marketing, to apply for funding, all this documentation stuff.’ When they said ‘yes’, honestly, it was like our dream came to reality.

Damascus Rose Kitchen has been set up to give priority and a good environment to people who are refugees and immigrants. Why? Because we went through this journey. We were finding it hard to find jobs, to find people who respect us, who won’t discriminate against us. There are so many barriers, like a culture barrier, language barrier, different things, you know? We don't apply for big funding anymore, because we self-fund, which is amazing.

All the Old Fire Station team was keen as we were to succeed. It was such a good relationship. They were knowing when they needed to help, and when they needed to be stepping back, which is very good, because they give us our independence. Honestly, we never worried. Maybe you can't believe it, but really, we didn't have any problem with our relationship. It worked, I guess, because we both make sure our teams love each other and know what's important to each other. 

We don't pay big rent. If they say one day, ‘go out,’ then we can't afford anywhere. If we struggle with something, we know we have this big partnership with very good people that we trust. It was very helpful for us to get support with marketing, with HR. Something I really thanked the Fire Station for was that they found for me a consultant for finance. It was hard for me to decide who to go with, because it's something you need to trust someone for. I don't look for any other help now, I just go directly to contact Becca or Jeremy or Clara, and they always have suggestions or help.

Because OFS have never run a café, we learn together. We could be feeling disempowered. But they were learning with us, which makes us feel like we are empowering together. Partnerships rely on respect first; you should be really respecting your partner. And equality; if I feel they are trying to control or make us feel like we're not quite equal, I would never stay. We’ve become refugees already. People were already looking at us like we were second class, you know? 

Jeremy, if I sit with him, I always feel I'm equal. I can say anything. My team, they feel they own the place, which is amazing. This feeling doesn't come from nothing, it's come from how they are working with us. Partnership should be respect, equality, and I will say love. In English culture, you don't say love, but I feel like we love people. Warm welcome, warm hello, not saying hello just because you need to. OFS is giving us a space to say who we are, which is amazing.

We work with the all the people in the café and front of house. Sometimes we help them, sometimes they help us. It is very important to build this relationship and keep it. Chris is amazing. We email very quickly and we don’t say hello, like: ‘you know who we are, we don’t have this formal relationship’, which I like. Tom has been amazing, we miss Tom. I also work with Richard and John from Crisis. Both of them, they are gorgeous. My team always have very good feedback about how they're dealing with things. I was working very closely with the marketing team. And fundraising of course. Suzi, how didn’t I mention Suzi? Criminal. She's been very good friend. Elena’s a very good friend. I feel like I'm someone in this big team.

My team say, ‘we like the Old Fire Station.’ They say, ‘we miss home’, but if we didn't provide a good environment, they would never work here. And the good environment is not only me and Damascus Rose, it’s also Old Fire Station. They feel that the team is very respectful. They build more relationships than me because they're doing more than me. When the volunteer Tom was leaving, they were all about to cry. They used to feed him. They say, ‘I feel like he's my son’. They love Zoe, she’s also doing a very good job with us. Bethan was amazing, but she left.

I do know all your team. I want them to know us more. If people don't know you, they say, ‘foreign.’ But when you walk together, or you know me more, you would be like, ‘I like her, we’re the same. She comes from a different country, but we’re the same.’ We did some very nice gatherings together. We should do that again. Maybe inside the café together, maybe meetings with DRK when new OFS staff join. Some outings suit us better. Last time we went to the pub, which was nice, but for some people… like when you fully in a hijab, you go into pub and it’s a bit… uncomfy, I guess.

Jeremy used to do a lot of meetings in the café, which is also how we built our relationship. People love that. I do all my meetings there. All my different jobs, not only for Damascus Rose. It goes to advertise for both of us. This guy, the CEO for Oxford Food Hub, he was my guest today. First thing, he told me how nice the environment is. It gives you the vibe of home, especially when the food arrives. You feel different. A lot of OFS clients ask for our food for catering, people who hire the place for their workshops. People will say, ‘Oh, today we are being treated.’ They are bored of the white English sandwich stuff. I was so happy when Chris came to me one day saying, ‘Look Nuha, we went over our plan for hiring the rooms because of Damascus Rose.’ He made my day.  

I worried when we moved from East Oxford to the city centre. Jericho people, Summertown people. They're very rich; they are very picky and all this stuff. I was very worried, and especially my ladies with hijabs, and we're not giving commercial food. Is everyone expecting what we have? You know, we're doing homemade food. But to be fair, our customers are all very friendly. It could be very hard, because this type of job could hurt your feelings. Basically, you’re serving. It's called serving, you know? You need to look more about the wellbeing.

My team are very keen about the business, and they make the food with love. I guess it's why this vibe doesn't change, you know. I say, ‘let's make our customer feel our generosity, our love in the food.’ It's my character, not being a formal CEO, I'm more community lady. This type of model could be harder to work with. You know, more phone calls involved, more conversations involved, more meetings involved, more emotion involved. But OFS helped me to keep it. I guess they give us time, which is very precious in this country, which is amazing. I can't be a formal lady, looking like a CEO, no. We did our own style, not like not any commercial café.

Lenny in the café, his dad got married last summer, and he told his dad, ‘Oh, you should take catering from these people. They are very good.’ And we met the dad, and we did his catering. Amazing. Like a chain of love through food. I’ve always been in very professional jobs, and I’m very good at making networks. It’s my strength. But I never felt like in a café there will be this type of network. It's amazing. Food is absolutely a way to communicate. Because when I started that was the idea. To make us be part of our new community. And we had a lot of welcome, to be honest. A lot of English people, a lot of organizations, they want to be partners with us.

It's very important for any partnership to look equally to each other, which is really happening at the Old Fire Station. Jeremy always says, ‘we need you as you need us.’ If I leave here, I will never forget that. Because a lot of people work with refugees, but you always find something hidden. They are really not looking at you as they are looking at themselves, you know. But with Jeremy and Becca and all the Old Fire Station team, we really feel we are part of this country. We are equal with them. They need us as we need them. We couldn't find it anywhere else.