Syrian refugees have changed their tastes in Iraqi Kurdistan ... Homs, Taboula, and Fattoush

Initially, the coffee of Syrian refugee Abdul Samad did not convince anyone. But today it has become popular among its customers in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, who changed some of their customs with the arrival of refugees from neighboring Syria.

In the small, closed society of the autonomous region, the new arrivals upset some customs and traditions, not only with cuisine, but also architecturally, artically and linguistically, according to local sociologists.

Six years ago, the Kurdish Abdul Samad Abdul Qadir (45 years) left Syria in a state of war and arrived in Erbil, the largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan, which was in the midst of an economic boom.

There, he opened a café serving only Syrian-style coffee, alongside Italian espresso.

During the first week, he offered a cup to each of the shopkeepers around him, he says. But in an area where tea is considered the king of drinks, Abd al-Samad was met with dull faces and angry lips.

"In the first year, 99 percent of my clients were Arabs from other parts of Iraq, and they were few," he added, adding to his four Syrian workers.

Over time, with the addition of a lot of sugar spoons to reduce the bitterness of coffee, he now sells “between 200 to 300 cups of coffee a day to customers, 90 percent of whom are Iraqi Kurds.”

On the other side, hummus, tabbouleh, cheese, olive oil and fattoush dishes invaded restaurant tables.

Dr. Hussein Ahmed, in cultural studies, believes that "Syrian refugees have proven that the cultures of new arrivals are beneficial when they come in contact with local traditions and customs."

For example, Ahmed Le France Press says that since 2011 there has been a change in “new interior designs, new drinks, mixed marriages that contribute to more social communication” between the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, who do not share the same language, but are calling for the same country that has not They can create it yet.

In the Iraqi Kurdish community, which does not stop defending its identity, language, and privacy towards the central authorities in Baghdad, accepting 300,000 Syrian refugees, most of them Kurds, was not self-evident.

But over the years, "the experience of the locals in facing Syrian culture has shattered the historical rejection of the foreigner," according to Ahmed.

Jumana Turki, for example, is an Arab who married a Syrian Kurd, and settled in Erbil in 2014.

At that time, the number of working women was very small in the Kurdistan region and Iraq in general, with the lowest female employment rates in the world, which amounted to about 15 percent. After dark, a woman was rarely on the street, says the 34-year-old sociologist.

Today, however, many stores employ women, and the corridors of markets and other malls are crowded with women until late at night.

Because of the impact of the Syrian refugees, Turki said, because in Syria, "it is normal for women to work and go out even at night."

According to Hussein Diwani, a Syrian Kurdish musician who arrived in Erbil in 2012, this exile was synonymous with returning to roots after 26 years of living in Syria, where wearing traditional dress or the colors of the Kurdish flag could lead to imprisonment.

And if Syrian refugees change some habits in Iraq, they too have found some of their lost roots.

They have returned to the public celebrations of Nowruz, the Kurdish New Year, which falls on March 21 with the start of the spring.
They also returned to wearing traditional loose-fitting trousers, and gained old, forgotten expressions.

"We helped the Kurds in Iraq revive our language," Diwani says. They speak a Kurdish language less mixed with Arabic than that in Syria, where the Kurdish language was banned. ”

"When I arrived, I heard words that my grandmother was using, but it was lost over the generations," added the 30's, who learned the Kurdish-Sorani language spoken by the people of Erbil and taught his Kurdish-Kurdish-Kurdish colleagues.

But Rudi Hassan, who arrived from Syria in 2008 to complete his medical studies, was the biggest witness to the change.

"When I came, we didn't know anything about each other and we had a lot of prejudices," he told France Presse. But today is completely different, we are bound by friendships and marriages. ”