Kitchen sanctuary from the rigours of Syrian war

The war in Syria has devastated millions of lives, forcing some 3 million to seek refuge outside the country according to the UN.

For those lucky enough to have escaped to build a new life elsewhere, finding employment can be incredibly tough.

For the women in particular, the most transferable skill they possess is cooking and thus, throughout the world, several catering and food businesses employing Syrian refugee women have emerged.

In the outskirts of Cairo, a group of Syrian women come together every day to prepare traditional meals such as ouzi, waraq aynab and kibbeh to customers hungry for the home-made Levantine fare.

Zeit Zeitoun began as a side project for Lina Kassah, a refugee from Damascus, who would provide home-cooked meals for parties and events. Ms Kassah would deliver the orders herself and during one such visit came into contact with Tamara Al Rifai, a humanitarian worker and Cairo resident originally from Syria.

Ms Al Rifai embarked on a fundraising campaign to help establish Zeit Zeitoun. She raised 25,000 Egyptian pounds (Dh5,131) to buy the necessary equipment and rent a small kitchen.

“The project started with a month of trial-and-error recipes,” says Ms Al Rifai. “If you put seven Syrian women in one kitchen, in addition to three outsiders – my mother, her friend and myself – you will need a peace negotiator to reach consensus on how much lemon juice to add or whether or not pomegranate molasses is poured at the beginning or at the end of making tomato sauce.”

With the final recipes in place, the team began to reach out to potential customers via social media. Orders come in via Facebook and WhatsApp, with an average of three big ones a day. The company raises enough to “empower the women and make them earn a decent living and contribute to running their households”, says Ms Al Rifai.

Zeit Zeitoun employs seven women, some of whom are the main breadwinners for their families. When recruiting, priority is given to women who have lost their husbands or are single mothers.

“We left Syria not because we wanted to, but because we had to. I was depressed for a whole year and didn’t leave the house,” says Ms Kassah. “I gained weight, my husband was sick. We enjoyed a certain standard of living in Syria and that disappeared when we left.”

The best way to overcome her depression was to “work, live my life and see people”.

Such enterprises in the food sector have taken hold around the world including in Lebanon, UK, US and Canada, providing not just a valuable income, but a shared space for the women to socialise and help rebuild from the traumas of war.