Grünwald – The Syrian Hamed Abboud reads from his book – district of Munich

At a birthday party recently. While everyone helps themselves to the generous buffet set up on the dining table, with salads, cakes and whipped cream, while the men fetch ice-cold beer from the rain barrel in the garden, a woman with colorful braids orders from her partner: “Hot water , You’re welcome.” Such austerity on this date? In her chic dress, she doesn’t exactly look like an inveterate vegan or any other nutritional ideologist. Curiosity is aroused and you end up sitting very close to them.

It turns out that she only returned from a fasting cure the day before. The birthday party is the day she is allowed to break the fast. In the morning there was already an apple that tasted better than ever, reports the native African. And she brought a bowl of rice for later. Alcohol is of course totally forbidden, hence the hot water used in the cure. However, she didn’t do the fasting cure to improve her figure, but to counteract pure stress, as she confesses privately. Because her job is pushing her to the limit.

The woman is something like a refugee representative in a Bavarian town and at the moment many of her clients are complaining, namely all those who were there before the war broke out in the Ukraine. They ask why all Ukrainians get work permits, free public transport and other benefits, while a Syrian woman has to pay 70 euros for her bus ticket. No, envy is not nice, but neither is the dilemma of the contact person for all migrants in the village. Because of all the emails, calls and no answers from above, she urgently had to switch off and go on fasting leave.

There is a good opportunity to deal with refugees from other countries again on Thursday, June 2, at 7.30 p.m. in the Grünwald Neighborhood Aid Café Meeting Point. There the Syrian Hamed Abboud reads from his book “Tales hidden in my beard”. In a first volume he had already told of the horrors of the Syrian war, the new book is about arriving in the new home – told with humor and a wink.

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