Food, for thought: the 70’s gallery that grew into a restaurant and social enterprise
The financial strain of Melbourne’s COVID-19 lockdown is jeopardising Afghan Gallery’s support of essential education programs in Afghanistan.
Two stories have dominated the news and competed for audiences’ attention over the last few weeks.
Melbourne’s sixth lockdown of the pandemic is expected to last well into Spring, with a fatigued population now relying on vaccination rates to outpace the exponential growth of the highly contagious Delta variant.
At the same time that Victorian authorities released the state’s daily COVID-19 case numbers last week, U.S. President Joe Biden was mid-way through a televised address on America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Taliban had swept through city after city in the country, toppling the government and constricting the end of a 20-year-war to frenzied devastation at Kabul’s international airport.
Homaira Mershedi is the manager of Melbourne restaurant Afghan Gallery and Vice President of the not-for-profit Afghan Australian Development Organisation (AADO).
“I so fear for the level of trauma that the people are going through at the moment,” Ms Mershedi says.
“I remember when I was in Afghanistan, when the Russians invaded. I remember the sounds of the bombing… I think the older that we get, we are more traumatised by it.”
Ms Mershedi migrated to Melbourne from Kabul when she was 12. She forged a diverse career in science, research and as a translator with the UNHCR, before switching paths to manage Afghan Gallery, one of the oldest Afghan restaurants in Australia.
Ms Mershedi’s uncle, Aziz Salehi, established the Fitzroy site as an art gallery in 1978 before her aunt, Dr Nouria Salehi, transformed it into a restaurant in 1982 to sponsor refugees fleeing the Afghan-Soviet war.
Art, antiques and tapestries embodying Afghan culture and history still decorate the two-storey venue, which hosts 200 people when fully booked.
The restaurant donates 80% of its profits to Afghanistan, primarily through AADO projects focused on sustainable education and community development.
Ms Mershedi says, “Basically 24 hours a day I’m working for the restaurant. I go to bed with it, I wake up with it, I do some of the cooking just to make sure that it’s done the right way, I do all the shopping. It’s changed my life dramatically, but it’s worth it.”
With takeaway a tested but unsustainable option for the restaurant, the most significant challenges of the pandemic have been maintaining and supporting a tight-knit staff while continuing to fund local projects in Afghanistan.
“We really want to work for people who don’t have a voice in Afghanistan, and who will never make it out. That’s the reality, and the truth,” Ms Mershedi says.
AADO plans to deliver a science teacher training program for the Afghan Ministry of Education, but the not-for-profit is unable to finance the initiative in 2021 due to the strain of repeated lockdowns.
“It’s really, really tough. I don’t know how we will manage if this [lockdown] goes any longer,” Ms Mershedi says.
The volatile ground situation in Afghanistan presents additional challenges, although Ms Mershedi says that so far, the Taliban haven’t intervened in AADO’s operations which include literacy and numeracy courses for women in rural villages.
Ms Mershedi struggles to find the words that encapsulate what it’s like to watch the distressing events currently unfolding in the country. She describes a sense of collective grief, and is hoping for peace, stability and freedom of education in the country’s future.
“I also hope that the world doesn’t turn a blind eye on Afghanistan this time around. Because the matter is very, very heated at the moment and I’m just so afraid that in two, three days’ time, everyone will forget.”
