On December 19, 2020, when the lockdown had swept the German inner cities empty and more and more restaurants closed their doors forever, on that day Rawaa al-Taani and Mohammed Ghadab opened their restaurant in downtown Schweinfurt.
They had been renovating the shabby shop for two years.
Walls plastered, tiles laid, windows, doors and electrics replaced.
On weekends and after work, often until after midnight.
Now the couple from Syria did not want to wait any longer.
A restaurant opening in the middle of lockdown?
Her friends said she was crazy, says the 34-year-old.
“They probably thought what about this Arab man?
It's broken in the head! ”On the evening of the opening day, however, they came home completely starved.
It was so busy that they didn't have time for breaks.
“Yalla Yalla” is what they called their restaurant: let's go.
Quickly.
It goes well with the restaurant's food, the stuffed pita breads and falafel sandwiches that can be quickly eaten out of hand.
And it suits its owners who, with drive and determination, have fulfilled their wish for their own restaurant in just a few years.
She learned to cook from her mother
It is a Sunday afternoon when the young entrepreneurs sit in their restaurant and talk about the beginnings.
It's still quiet, a little break between lunch and dinner.
Only one Syrian family is sitting at the next table in front of large plates of fried chicken and rice.
It has now been six years since the couple (in Syria, spouses keep their surnames even after the wedding) left their hometown Damascus.
Ghadab ran a tailor shop there with 17 employees, his wife worked in the kitchen of a hospital and even then dreamed of having her own restaurant.
She comes from a large family with eight sisters, seven brothers and a mother who cooked for loved ones every day.
"I learned everything about cooking from her."
Damascus was a beautiful city, says Mohammed Ghadab.
He remembers the busy streets, the scent of jasmine in the parks, the Suq al-Hamidiya, the bazaar, whose stalls lined up for kilometers.
He googles for pictures on his cell phone: "Here you can see how nice it was!"
But life in Syria has got worse every year.
From one day to the next, employees stopped showing up for work, friends never returned from shopping.
“It was normal to die,” says Rawaa al-Taani.
With a heavy heart, the couple left home, friends and family behind and set off for Europe.
The two came to Germany via the Balkan route in August 2015.
After a few months in Stuttgart, they moved on to Schweinfurt, a town of 50,000 in the Franconian wine country.