Ahmed Ali Mazen can’t remember the last time he missed the call to prayer.
Five times a day, he heads out the back of his restaurant, Old Jerusalem at 25th and Mission streets, and climbs the stairs to his rooftop, which overlooks the Mission and Bernal Heights.
He always concludes the routine with a Marlboro Gold and a scorching-hot cup of tea with fresh mint.
It’s a lifetime away from the farm where Mazen, now age 58, was raised, one of 11 children, in a small village named Saffa in Ramallah, Palestine. His family grew cucumbers, tomatoes, watermelon and, on the village’s mountaintop, olives.
The Mazen family raised cows, sheep and goats. Mazen had his own pet donkey, which he said he loved dearly.
“Donkeys were for those who couldn’t afford horses,” he said. “Those who couldn’t afford donkeys walked.”
Mazen’s donkey was his most prized possession. He would use it to plow the family’s land and carry produce back from the top of the mountain.
He looks back on his childhood fondly, remembering the village’s ceremonial olive harvest and the fiercely competitive soccer matches.
He and his friends would wait outside the nearby girls’ school in the afternoons, each picking who they said they would one day marry.
“Of course, we never had the guts to go up to them and introduce ourselves. It was just fun to love from afar. That’s what kids do.”
Mazen was 19 during the first intifada in 1987, a political uprising against Israel in which more than 1,100 Palestinians, many of them children, were killed.
“Nothing was ever the same,” he says.
He was still in his teens when he left to start a new life in the United States. In San Francisco, he worked all sorts of odd jobs: Bagging groceries at Mike’s on Mission Street, tow-truck driver, and endless kitchen gigs.
Next came an arranged marriage. “She had seen a photo of me beforehand, I didn’t, but I didn’t really care,” he recalled. “I just wanted to get married.”
His bride was another Palestinian from Ramallah, possibly one of the girls he’d admired from afar during his school days.
He said falling in love and wanting to raise a family motivated him to be self-sufficient by starting his own business. Mazen felt there was a gap to be filled, that existing Middle Eastern restaurants weren’t serving “true” Palestinian food.
One day, Mazen noticed a new “for sale” sign in a window on his commute home. The asking price was far above his price range, but with loans from a bank, family and friends, he cobbled together enough money to buy it.
Old Jerusalem Restaurant opened in 2005. At first, business was so slow that he had to borrow another $40,000 loan from a friend, but eventually it picked up.
Now, 21 years later, Old Jerusalem offers authentic Palestinian dishes like pistachio-crusted lamb chops and Nablusi kunefe, a dessert made of crispy, shredded phyllo, layered with melted cheese and soaked in sweet, fragrant syrup.
“We serve the food I ate growing up, no compromises,” Mazen said.
On its face, Mazen’s story is one of the many successful stories of Palestinian immigrants. He has a wife and three kids, all of whom went to college, and a longstanding business.
He has friends in the Palestinian community here, like Sami Rami, who owns the nearby Middle Eastern market. These days he goes to countless weddings for his friends’ grown children. And he has come to love this sanctuary city.
“This place has everything you need to love it,” he said. “There is so much diversity here: Arab, Chinese, Black, you name it. If you want to get to work in this country, there’s also the money for it.”
Yet Mazen longs for the life he left behind. The annual olive harvest has become nearly impossible due to the current conflict, he says, but he still visits home about once a year to check in on his mother.
“Do you want me to tell you what is good for the story, or do you want me to be honest?” he asked. “I’m so grateful for what God has given me, but if I could go back 20 years from now, I would have never left.”
“The biggest mistake anyone can make is to leave their country,” he said.
“Money doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t fix that feeling of comfort hearing the mosque’s call to prayer, or seeing your children gather with your nephews, and grow up alongside their cousins. No matter how much money you make, you’ll never be able to get what you once had at home.”
