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| Hussein Faleh sells expensive fruit tarts from his Baghdad bakery. Sam Dagher |
How persistence pays for a Baghdad baker
With improved security in the Iraqi capital, customers are buying more tarts and cakes.
from the October 30, 2007 edition
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Even the owner of the bakery, Mr. Shabibi, has joined his family in Amman, where he has since opened a branch of his sweet shop.
But his Baghdad outpost has remained resilient in the face of a multitude of challenges largely due to Faleh's dedication.
A regular at the bakery, Wissam Thamer says he and his family always buy from Faleh. So when it came time to celebrate their daughter's first birthday, they naturally came to Jadriyah for her cake.
"I feel safer than before. Before I wouldn't be here after sunset because it was too difficult to drive at night. Now, I can drive here at 8 o'clock with my family."
Dangers still lurk
By 10 a.m. on most days, as Iraqis maneuver through the choking traffic brought on by extra security and checkpoints, Faleh has already been hard at work for hours, immersed in a world of exquisite chocolate mousse cakes and delicate éclairs.
"I love my work. It's perfect for me. It has saved me from our reality," he says as he slices peaches for his custard-filled mini fruit tarts.
The cleanshaven and mustachioed Faleh wears an apron around his waist. His well-stocked modern kitchen is kept spotless by his two busy assistants. He works every day including Fridays, the traditional Muslim day of rest.
The number of attacks has dropped in the city, but he's always aware of the dangers. He lives within walking distance from the shop. He barely ventures out of his neighborhood except for a stroll or a quick meal with his fiancée on some afternoons around the nearby main campus of Baghdad University.
"There are no movie theaters. There's just no fun," he says.
Baking to escape
While the customers are beginning to return, problems of running a business during a war remain.
First, the most basic of ingredients, such as flour and chocolate powder and tablets, found on the local market are of such poor quality that they do not meet the shop's standards, says Faleh. Jars of fruit filling – such as raspberry and kiwi, and cocktail-cherries used as toppings – are sometimes hard to find.
"Iraqi-made chocolate does not taste right," he says. "The secret of my chocolate mousse cake is the hazelnut chocolate that I use."
So every three months Shabibi sends him supplies from Jordan with one of the transport companies that ply the mostly desert highway connecting both countries.
Most of the supplies make it through the roughly 12-hour journey, the grueling summer heat, and the probing hands of the Iraqi customs police at the border crossing, says Faleh as he shows off his well-stocked freezer and supply room.
Then there is electricity. Although state power supply has improved recently over the summer months when he was fortunate to get three hours a day, the situation is still precarious, forcing the shop to rely on a high-cost and high-maintenance generator to keep strawberry and vanilla-mocha and chocolate layered cheesecakes stored at the right temperature.
The latest challenge is the water.
He was just told by a municipal inspector that tap water in Jadriyah now has severe chlorine deficiency.
So he only uses bottled water for all his preparations of custard and whipped cream.
But, it's all worth the effort, he says. "Making sweets makes me forget our bitter reality in a way."
Awadh al-Taee contributed in Baghdad.
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