Falluja Restaurant Is Reborn in Baghdad, Offering Nostalgia With Its Kebab
BAGHDAD — Long before Fallujah was known the world over for deadly jihadis, it was known all over Iraq for its kebab — fatty lamb, ground and mixed with onion, grilled on a skewer over an open fire and served with a pinch of sumac — at a joint called Haji Hussein.
Everyone, it seemed, ate at Haji Hussein: locals, soldiers, tourists and businessmen traveling the Baghdad-to-Amman highway that runs through the city. Starting in 2003, journalists covering the war ate there, and so did U.S. soldiers and the insurgents who fought them, perhaps even at the same time.
The restaurant was damaged by bombs multiple times, and entirely flattened once by a U.S. airstrike. It was rebuilt, embraced as a symbol of Fallujah’s own rebirth after years of war, only to be abandoned when the city fell to the Islamic State more than two years ago.
Now the much-loved kebab restaurant has been reborn again, this time in Baghdad, in a modern, three-story building in the upscale Mansour neighborhood.
A new entrant on the capital’s thriving restaurant scene, it offers great kebab and a dose of nostalgia for a time when Baghdadis thought nothing of zipping off to Fallujah for lunch at Haji Hussein.
Bryan Denton for The New York Times
A waiter bent under the weight of a stack of kebabs wrapped in bread being served at the restaurant.
“This was the craft of my grandfather,” said Mohammed Hussein, who runs the business that has been in his family since the 1930s, when Fallujah was a city of agriculture, smuggling and tribal traditions, not a jihadi haven.
The restaurant, shiny and well lit, is packed most nights, and patrons wait for tables — 15 to 20 minutes or so, something almost unheard-of in Iraq. There are two flat-screen televisions on the first floor, tuned to news channels reporting on the military campaign to retake Fallujah from the Islamic State.
“I can’t bear to watch the news,” Hussein said.
There was one news flash recently that did not escape his notice: The Iraqi air force, like the Americans 12 years ago, announced that it had struck his restaurant site in Fallujah because leaders with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, were meeting there.
A statement from Iraq’s Joint Operation Command appeared on the television: “Based on intelligence information about a meeting for ISIS leaders in Haji Hussein restaurant inside the center of Fallujah an airstrike was launched on the restaurant, which led to the killing of tens of ISIS terrorists.”
But the restaurant, Hussein said, has been deserted for 2 1/2 years.
Bryan Denton for The New York Times
A diner waited for iftar to begin as news footage of the battle for Falluja played on the television in the background.
When Iraqi forces recently made gains inside Fallujah, people almost immediately began talking about Haji Hussein. The federal police released a combat video saying they were fighting near the restaurant, and a glimpse of the rust-colored facade showed it damaged but not destroyed. On state television, commentators expressed hope that Haji Hussein might reopen soon in Fallujah.
In 2004, the Americans bombed the restaurant based on intelligence that insurgents loyal to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq, the forerunner of the Islamic State, were eating there.
This being the holy month of Ramadan, the Baghdad restaurant has been busy lately serving iftar, the evening meal to break the day’s fast. The parking lot is also a beehive of activity: a security guard checking cars for bombs; a man selling balloons to families; children begging.
As Hussein, 49, sat down to chat one recent evening, he was surrounded by bow-tied waiters — much of the staff from Fallujah now works in the new place — filling the tables with dishes of mezze, or appetizers, as diners waited to break their fast.
In addition to heaping platters of the famous kebab, there were dates coated with sesame paste, watermelon, hummus, cucumber and tomato salad, pickles and soup. There were some new items on the menu that were not served in Fallujah: grilled river carp, called masgoof; a Yemeni chicken-and-rice meal called mandi; and maklouba, a dish of chicken and eggplant and rice that is originally Palestinian.
As customers streamed in, Hussein tried to recall how many times his restaurant in Fallujah had been damaged or destroyed by the war.
“Too many to count,” he said.
At least inside his restaurant, Iraq does not seem hopelessly divided by sect. Sunnis and Shiites break their fast at slightly different times, and as sundown approached one of the televisions was tuned to a Sunni channel, the other to Iraqiya, the channel of the Shiite-led government.
When the call to prayer — the signal that the day’s fast was over — went out on one, the Sunnis began eating. Fifteen minutes or so later, the Shiite customers began eating.
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