The Izz Cafe story: From Palestinian displacement to Cork culinary institution
Izz and Eman Alkarajeh at Izz Cafe, Cork, Picture Dan Linehan
After weeks of near-endless rain, a rare and intoxicating blast of sunshine is mirrored by the sparkling, sunny demeanour of the small crowd assembled to celebrate the fifth birthday of Izz and Eman Alkarajeh’s multi-award winning Izz Cafe, and cut the ribbon on a new extension.
But just as the rain will inevitably return the next day — and it does — the collective mood will also return to a darker place that has preoccupied all gathered here since last October, when the Hamas attack on Israel triggered what rapidly mutated into one of the most appalling and prolonged assaults on humanity in modern history: Israel’s uncompromising, genocidal war on Gaza, killing well over 34,000 Palestinians to date, mostly civilians, almost 70% women and children.
Deliberate restriction of aid to a desperate and starving population has caused deaths of multiple children through malnutrition, and the spectre of mass famine now looms large.
Izz and Eman’s story is familiar to many but no less inspiring for repetition. A young Palestinian couple, prevented by Israeli authorities from living in their homeplace of Hebron, then forced to leave Saudi Arabia where they had been working and rearing a young family, they wound up in direct provision in Ireland in 2016.
With the help of new Irish friends, Darina Allen chief among them, they began trading at Mahon Point farmer’s market, selling Eman’s home-cooked traditional Palestinian dishes, and success was near instantaneous.
A year later, they were able to establish a brick-and-mortar presence in Cork City centre and, though neither had any hospitality experience, the awards and acclaim began rapidly piling up.
“Even when we were in direct provision,” says Izz, “we had a vision for this café. I started designing the logo and the brand, developing the business identity and our first gazebo at the market had the café brand. Since then things have happened way beyond our expectation. The farmer’s markets helped us to connect with the network of food producers and suppliers who were all so supportive, and became our friends.
"When we launched the café, it was a dream come true. We became very busy, very quickly and were soon struggling with space, especially at weekends. We were sad to disappoint so many people. We have followers from all over Ireland coming here every weekend. One family of six got the train down from Dublin, ate and went straight back to Dublin. I was very impressed.”
I first met Izz, Eman and their three children on their second week at the farmer’s market, cowering under a spiteful Irish rain.
Eman spoke little English, concentrating on the food and though already a very good home cook, she appeared nervous, perhaps not entirely convinced she was cut out to be a professional chef.
In the first days of the restaurant, a steep learning curve, she sometimes wore an especially frazzled look.
Five years on, Eman is a different creature entirely. She is still a gentle and preternaturally calm presence but her English has vastly improved, and she glides through the restaurant with relaxed confidence.
“I’m really very busy all the time,” she says, “I do have chefs and workers but if you want to keep quality, you don’t trust anybody else with your food. Izz is always telling me to hire more people, and to rest and spend time with him and the kids, but I feel, no, I take care to make sure the food is the best it can be. Yes, I’m very strict in the kitchen [laughing], nobody likes me in the kitchen.”
THE IMPACT OF GENOCIDE
Eman has immersed herself in regional styles of Palestinian cuisine, adding all the time to her repertoire. As we talk on a Tuesday morning when the restaurant is closed, we share exquisite mansaf, lamb cooked in a broth flavoured with jameed, hard dried salted yogurt that is my new favourite ingredient, and many new menu items are full meals as opposed to street food snacks.
Upon receiving his Irish passport last August, Izz booked to attend two hospitality trade shows in Germany, 21 days apart, scheduling a visit to family in Palestine in between.
“The first exhibition had already started when we began hearing news about October 7,” says Izz, “and I became very nervous because we know Israel responds madly when they are hit with a small operation. The response to this was going to be huge. By the time I arrived in Jordan, the border was closed, I couldn’t go to Palestine.”
Israeli retaliation was of the horrific magnitude anticipated by Izz and others, and though the Alkarajeh’s extended family live in the West Bank, the impact was soon felt in Cork.
“We have two chefs from Gaza, brothers, Habib and Ramzi, and they couldn’t take all the bad news and when they lost communication [temporarily] with their family, they assumed the worst had happened. Habib and Ramzi are like our family as well. Their parents, brothers, sister and their children lost their home, were displaced and fled from the North to the South. They sheltered with others in a UN school but that area was also attacked so they ended up living in tents.
"Habib couldn’t do anything [in the kitchen], he was just shocked and every day the news was worse. So we decided to close and do takeaway, but we were really struggling even with that. So we decided to close altogether, we had to take care of the two guys because they were really in a bad situation.
“We had been so excited to open the extension but we couldn’t feel happy for anything. We stopped eating. We felt guilty when we knew they were struggling to get water. They would walk in the streets for kilometres just to find a bottle of water and snipers shoot at them. Habib’s mother has cancer and already needs care, even in a stable situation but the hospitals were bombed and there’s no medical supply, their life was miserable. It was very hard for us to live a normal life.”
In Cork, friends, customers and champions called in to offer support, sometimes just offering hugs.
“One day,” says Eman, “they called me and said somebody outside wants to see you. I went and she said, ‘Hi’. I said, ‘Hi’, she said ‘I’m Jewish’. I said ‘OK’. And she said, ‘I really am so sorry for what is happening’ and she starts crying and I just went and hugged her. I said, ‘thank you so much, I appreciate your feeling, I just want you to tell the truth to everybody’.
"She said she had lived there, she said Palestinian people are really good people and they didn’t deserve what happened, and she came just to say, we stand with you and are sorry for what was happening. Lots, lots, lots of people called us, messaged us, they still are doing it.”
“There were even children emptying out their savings boxes,” says Izz, “for the children of Gaza and the people of Gaza. A retired Irish doctor came in and wanted our help to connect with health services in Gaza so he and other doctors could go to help. We are really so moved, we
appreciate so much what everybody is doing, it’s so emotional and sometimes I just ….”
All three of us sit in silence, momentarily overwhelmed.
THE CITY PROTESTS
Within days of October 7, a protest march was held in Cork with one every single Saturday since.
“It is where Cork gains its name the ‘Rebel County’,” says Izz, “and Irish people do not accept injustice, colonialism, by nature resisting, fighting against this with every means. It’s a peaceful movement, to stop the genocide, and we try to support them as much as we can. This war has changed a lot of people who were ignorant about the reality of what’s happening, now the real narrative is being spread by real people on the ground.”
At a national demonstration in Dublin earlier this year, Izz realised the extent of Izz Cafe’s renown.
“We closed that Saturday and all went with our staff. I was surprised how ‘famous’ I was [chuckling], everyone was shaking hands, welcoming me as if they knew me, even some people visiting from Australia.”
In the face of Israel’s grinding intransigence in their prosecution of this brutal war, it has been hard to maintain hope.
“There’s a difference between what you hope for,” says Izz, “and what you think might happen. We hope for peace, liberation, independence. I don’t want to keep applying for Israeli permission to visit my family. It’s 2024. This is not happening anywhere on earth other than Palestine. They are controlling our lives. Why do they decide whether my wife is allowed to visit my family or when I am allowed to travel from one city to another?
"I don’t know how they accept themselves colonising another people, deciding how much calories a certain area in Palestine can have during the month. And we have to keep struggling and fighting for our rights, and that doesn’t mean necessarily firing a rocket. Even speaking, demonstrating, is fighting. Celebrating our culture is fighting. We are struggling for our freedom in every possible manner that is legal and protected by international law. We ask everybody, don’t stop talking about Palestine, especially Gaza.”
Eman gazes absently out the window towards the River Lee.
“I think it’s going to rain,” she says. About two minutes later, an almighty cloudburst pours down. “How did you know?” asks Izz in wonderment. Eman shrugs, she has learned to read the vagaries of Cork weather as well as any born and bred Leesider.
“There are beautiful places all over Ireland,” she says, “but whenever we are away, I always say, ‘now I want to go back home … to Cork.’ Cork is now our home.”
