‘I Felt Like I Lost My City’
Famous Syrian restaurateur who fled Damascus four years ago is about to open up his first London location
Imad Alarnab holds his hands to his chest, crossed at his heart, when he recalls his life in Damascus. “I felt like I lost my city,” he says as we sit on a bench outside a posh coffee shop off Carnaby Street in central London. Across the road is Alarnab’s Falafel Bar, a pop-up operated in conjunction with the nonprofit organization Help Refugees and its Choose Love campaign.
Alarnab has been in London for nearly four years now, having left his native Damascus — Syria’s capital and the oldest city in the world — and arrived in the UK via Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and France. The last leg of that journey, known all too well by thousands of refugees, was a 64-day ride in the back of a truck from Calais to London, where he applied for asylum.
“I remember when everyone knew everyone,” he says of his hometown, now decimated by the Syrian civil war. “Neighbors, our big families, we were so connected. Your memory and your relationships make that connection to the city. Here in London, it’s not the same, but [that feeling] is building, I think. London is starting to feel like my city.”
