{"id":23511,"date":"2023-01-25T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T17:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=23511"},"modified":"2023-02-08T11:00:24","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T19:00:24","slug":"camosun-grad-set-to-open-victorias-first-syrian-restaurant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2023\/01\/25\/camosun-grad-set-to-open-victorias-first-syrian-restaurant\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun grad set to open Victoria\u2019s first Syrian restaurant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun College English Language Development graduate and Syrian refuge Safaa Naeman is getting ready to open Victoria\u2019s first Syrian restaurant. Naeman, who was a keynote speaker for an International Women\u2019s Day 2019 event at Camosun, has been successfully running Syriana Catering since March 2021, a year after she graduated from Camosun. During that time, she has sometimes struggled to keep up with demand, so the jump to a restaurant storefront makes sense.<\/p>\n

Opening a restaurant is just the latest journey for Naeman, who moved to Canada in 2017 after fleeing the war in Syria. Naeman\u2014whose family arrived here through a private sponsorship organized by around 20 people\u2014says that the hardest things about adjusting to a new life in Canada were learning English and learning about Canadian culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely it\u2019s different, because it\u2019s a different language and different culture,\u201d says Naeman. \u201cBut when you start to know more people, see how nice they are, how much they are supportive, like when you start to speak the language, life becomes easier. But at the beginning, it was hard, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Camosun alumna Safaa Naeman is about to open her own restaurant (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Naeman says that in particular not knowing English was hard, but once she picked it up, everything got easier.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe basic thing to feel you are a part of the community is to speak the language,\u201d she says. \u201cSo we found this hard when we arrived because we don\u2019t speak English and that\u2019s why I studied very hard. I want to understand the school classes, my children\u2019s school classes, I want to understand what\u2019s going on, I want to improve our family situation, financially, find a good job… When you learn language, the door absolutely will open and the life will start to become easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naeman says that everyone at Camosun was very supportive during her time as a student.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the most beautiful period of my life,\u201d she says. \u201cAll the teachers there were very, very nice, supportive. I always felt Camosun is my second home in Victoria. I can ask them, tell them what I need, they\u2019re always ready to support. I love it. It was the first door open for me to learn English.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naeman was selling her baked goods at the Moss Street Market back in 2020 when the inspiration hit to open a restaurant; it\u2019s now a reality, opening at 1258 Esquimalt Road on Tuesday, February 14. (A GoFundMe page<\/a> was created to help Naeman with opening costs and as of press time had raised $8,505 of its $30,000 goal.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we saw the people loved, really, what we made, like the baklava\u2014I always heard \u2018This is the best baklava we have ever tried, Safaa\u2019\u2014that made me really happy, thinking more about [taking this] serious[ly], to make the decision to have our own business. Why not? There\u2019s not really much of this kind of Syrian restaurant or desserts… we miss it here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from the benefit of being able to work alongside her family (her husband and two teenage sons have all helped out with cooking for Syriana Catering), Naeman says that one purpose behind the restaurant is to be able to give back to the city that gave her and her family a new home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we arrived, we want to add something good to this city, as we love it so much,\u201d she says. \u201cWe really want to give back the good things that we know and that we learn from our grandma, from the Syrian kitchen civilization. So that\u2019s really what we want, to be a good addition, to give back, and to show our gratitude to this lovely community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun College English Language Development graduate and Syrian refuge Safaa Naeman is getting ready to open Victoria\u2019s first Syrian restaurant. Naeman, who was a keynote speaker for an International Women\u2019s Day 2019 event at Camosun, has been successfully running Syriana Catering since March 2021, a year after she graduated from Camosun. During that time, she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,281],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-january-25-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23511"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23562,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23511\/revisions\/23562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}