Sweet smell of success for Syrian refugee in Jordan

IRBID, Jordan: Aromas of orange blossom, almond and coconut waft from the northern Jordan shop of Mazen Obeido, a 42-year-old Syrian who never imagined he would prosper again far from home.

“In Damascus I had several shops and everything was fine, but a year after the outbreak of the war, I left everything behind,” said the master pastry chef and father of three who said he no longer felt safe in his home country.

So he decided to start again from scratch and hired a property in Irbid north of Amman, half of which became his kitchen and the other half the shop.

Around 200,000 refugees from Syria now live in the town 89 km north of the capital.

Jordan hosts about 650,000 people who have fled from neighbouring Syria because of the conflict that erupted there in 2011, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The authorities in Amman say the number is double that – at 1.3 million.

According to the UNHCR, more than 80 per cent of Syrian refugees in Jordan live below the poverty line.

“I worked night and day without stop,” said Obeido, whose efforts have paid off and meant he could again expand.

“I opened a second shop, then a third, a fourth and then a fifth,” he said, proud to continue a trade that was passed down from father to son.

Sesame cakes, baklava, semolina cakes sprinkled with pistachios or traditional ice-cream – he makes and sells in Jordan the same products that used to be displayed on large trays in his stores in Syria. There, “Jordanians came in their dozens to my shops. At weekends, they bought up 90 per cent of my pastries which were much cheaper than in Jordan,” he recalled. — AFP

A man works at a shop selling traditional Syrian sweets, that is owned by Syrian refugee Mazen Obeido who fled the conflict in his homeland.

Syrian refugee Mazen Obeido who fled the conflict in his homeland, gives an interview at one of his five traditional sweet shops in the northern Jordanian town of Irbid. — AFP photos