Planting Geraniums ... just in case! - my notes
Mon, 20 Nov 2000 08:28:48 +0200
Dear Colleagues,
Last Friday (17th November), around lunchtime, I took my son to the barber's across the street from Al Bardauni Restaurant in Ramallah. Most of the international visitors to the Ministry of Education, and to Palestine in general, have been to Al Bardauni. It is the restaurant on the main street leading downhill to the west (towards Tel Aviv) out of Ramallah town center. It is the one with the magnificent garden, full of multi-colored seasonal blooms most of the year round. It is, also, the one with the fireplace in winter, with the small fish tank on top, in the indoors dining hall with the unplastered old stone walls coated with transparent silicon to make them damp-proof.
Two of Al Bardauni's waiters were planting Geraniums in the isle in the middle of the street. As soon as I stopped the car, they looked at me and greeted me with a wave of the hand and broad smiles. They immediately reminded me of the first intifada of 1987.
For more than four years during the first intifada, Al Bardauni was closed down. The waiters and cooks lost their jobs. The owner, Adel, survived by shifting to a number of alternative odd jobs. He moved the tables and chairs out of the beautiful garden and turned the space into a small farm to breed and sell German Shepard dogs and into a plant nursery and green house. He fermented and sold natural plant fertilizer. He landscaped and maintained gardens around Ramallah. He, also, fixed leaking roofs of houses. He taught gardening on a part-time basis at the Ramallah Friends School and gave seedlings for the School's garden in return for the tuition fees of his son. This was not the first time Al Bardauni was closed down. It happened once before, in June 1967, when the war broke out and Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. At that time Adel was only six years old.
Adel's father started the Restaurant in 1963, from his savings as a contractor in Kuwait. Previously, in 1961, he started another restaurant in Jericho. He named both after Al Bardauni River in Zahleh, Lebanon, where he and his wife spent their honeymoon. The Jericho Al Bardauni had children’s outdoor games and a small zoo! It was a success story. Adel's mother liked the animals and took care of them. She especially liked a female one-eyed ape. The ape was very friendly and moved freely outside her cage among the customers of the restaurant. One day, she snatched four-month-old Adel from the arms of his mother, hugged him and ran up a tree. She was lured back, with Adel, to the ground with food offered by Adel's frightened mother. In June 1967, the Jericho Al Bardauni was looted. The animals disappeared. More than a year later, Adel's family were visiting the famous Tel Aviv zoo. In a cage, a one-eyed ape recognized Adel's mother and started jumping frantically around and uttered deafening shrieks. Adel's mother cried. She could do nothing more than go back home to Ramallah, very sad. After 1967, the Ramallah Al Bardauni reopened. But it was not until 1983 that it really picked up again, this time under Adel's modern-style management, until the first intifada started in 1987.
In 1992, Al Bardauni started operating again, with one cook and one waiter, with Adel. Slowly, it picked up and the old staff started returning to the Restaurant, one by one. The boom happened after the setting up of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994. Just before Al Aqsa Intifada started on September 28th, Al Bardauni had 42 employees altogether, during both summer and winter. They had the capacity to serve 370 people all at once. On average, the Restaurant had 150 customers per day. It generated a daily income of US$ 2,000. Adel believes that the biggest asset in Al Bardauni was his employees. They had a strong sense of belonging to the place. This is why most of the old employees came back after the first intifada. The secret in this is that Adel uses a collaborative and participatory approach in management (to use some of our jargon at the Ministry of Education). They hold weekly meetings to discuss issues freely and openly. He also treats them like friends and takes good care of them. He provides them with training, locally and internationally. Many of them had, at least one, crash course in psychology.
Now, Al Bardauni is empty and quiet. No commotion and excitement like when Robert di Nero or Dennis Ross dined here. No more music, no more colored lights till dawn every day. No smell of barbecued well-marinated lamb and kebab and narghiles with good tobacco. No more smoke gushing out of the kitchen’s chimney. All through last month, October, its total income was less than US$2,000, i.e. one day's income before the present intifada started. Thirty of the employees could not come to work from their villages and towns in the West Bank because of the Israeli-imposed closure and siege on Ramallah. They, however, received half of their October salaries from Al Bardauni. The remaining twelve live in Ramallah. They work in two shifts per day, half the normal working hours only. They receive two thirds of their salaries. At any time, there are more waiters in the Restaurant than customers, Adel says. He has already turned half of the garden space into a green house. No German Shepard dogs, as yet. He has the financial ability to go on like this for three more months. Meanwhile, he and his employees are planting the seasonal plants in preparation for spring.They do this dressed up in their usual clean black trousers and bright white jackets, with the name tags on their chests. "We have to keep the hope and we have to be prepared for the return of normal life and for spring, and for customers ... just in case".
Khalil Mahshi
Director General
International and Public Relations
Ministry of Education
Ramallah, West Bank
Palestine