There is a part of London forever twinned with Beirut, Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus or anywhere which happens to be the node of the current Arab Diaspora. Walk up Edgware Road from Marble Arch (So called because it’s made of Portland Stone!) to the Marylebone Road flyover and beyond to Chapel Market and towards Harrow Road and you will pass by an intoxicating slice of the Middle East and inhale a fair amount of smoke from the shisha, “hubble bubble,” pipes being smoked on sidewalk tables. In London, a walk in and around Edgware Road west of the city centre takes you to one of the many areas where members of the Middle Eastern community have settled – others are Bayswater, Kensington and Westbourne Grove.
The area began to attract Arab migrants in the late 19th century during a period of increased trade with the Ottoman Empire. The trend continued with the arrival of Egyptians in the 1950s, and greatly expanded beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present when events including the Lebanese Civil War, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, and unrest in Algeria brought more Arabs to the area. They established the present-day mix of bars and shisha cafes, which make the area known to Londoners by nicknames such as "Little Cairo" and "Little Beirut."
Many Lebanese restaurants, shisha cafes and Arabic-themed nightclubs line the street. The Odeon cinema, once the location of the biggest screen in London, often shows films in Arabic. Edgware Road is unique as a district, rich in ethnic culture, yet also in a very central area of London. The area is known for its distinctive and diverse communities from across the Middle East and Africa, with British Iranian comedian Omid Djalili describing Edgware Road as "after Damascus, Medina and Mecca, is probably the most Islamic place on the planet".
The real growth of the Lebanese community in London started in 1975, with the start of civil war in Lebanon. War drove thousands of people away. They settled all over the world, including in the UK. The exodus was aggravated in 1982 with the Israeli invasion.
Edgware Road is populated by shops selling Arab newspapers, books and music. There's even the odd pharmacy. In the food shops, you can purchase fresh fruit, vegetables, chicken, fish and lamb as well as other indigenous ingredients, such as rose blossom water and pomegranate molasses. Large wooden barrels display a colourful selection of dry, scented spices, as well as pickled aubergines, olives and limes. Some sell ready-made starters and labour-intensive meals, which you can just pop into the oven, grill or fry.
Coffee shops abound and on most days, customers – many of them part of the Arabic community who live nearby or are just passing by – can be seen puffing away at the shisha, an ornate pipe for aromatic tobacco. The restaurants range from smart to quite informal eateries, catering to an eclectic crowd as they are open till late. Some places close at 3am; others are known to close when guests leave. On Edgware Road you'll find an astounding array of Middle Eastern starters, both hot and cold, known as mezze. Many feature aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, radishes, okra, onion, chickpeas, lentils, rice, yogurt and herbs - and are accompanied by Lebanese bread. In general, they constitute an ideal meal for vegetarians.
Mezze can be so delicious and fresh, some diners do not move on to the main dishes; instead they just order more starters. Some of the finest are hoummos, chickpea puree prepared with sesame oil and lemon juice; tabbouleh, a parsley and tomato salad, with crushed wheat, onion, olive oil and lemon juice; and moujaddara, lentils and rice cooked to a creamy texture, topped with fried onions.
Try batinjan makdous, aubergines that have been filled with walnut and garlic; and kibbe, small mouthfuls of minced lamb, cracked wheat and pine kernels, either baked or deep-fried. Fruit juices and hand-made treats from the patisserie counter are a must at all Lebanese restaurants. Order a carrot and orange juice and baklavas – layered pastries in many shapes filled with pistachio nuts and honey.
A favourite salad is fattoush, which brings together lettuce, tomatoes, onion, mint, tiny morsels of deep-fried bread and an aubergine-coloured spice made out of crushed berries called sumak. Most carnivores gravitate towards the warm shawarma sandwiches. They offer marinated lamb or chicken, roasted on a skewer, combined with tomatoes and lettuce, and wrapped up in Lebanese bread. Kofta is a tasty alternative – grilled minced lamb, combined with parsley and pine kernels.
With Lebanese food there is always an excellent alternative for vegetarians - a falafel sandwich, which features small spheres of crushed chickpeas prepared with sesame oil and garlic. It's flavoured with a light tahini sauce, which is made out of sesame seeds.
On Edgware Road, this means the Babylon Salon, the Al-Ahram Bookstore, where you can pick up Lebanese fashion magazines, and Daminis, where you can turn those fashion tips into reality with the latest styles of shalwar kameez, and join the endless promenade of styled-up sons and daughters of sheikhs and oil magnates cruising the W2 strip. The restaurants feature live Lebanese music at weekends, and if it all leaves you hankering after the real thing, pop into Wonder Travel, where a flight to Beirut can be had for as little as £320.
London is too large to be ethnically zoned which is a good thing as we prefer it mixed up here so we can appreciate, share and celebrate diversity. Sometimes I wonder whether London shouldn't be voted the Arab capital of culture at some stage soon. There are, in actual fact, an enormous range of activities, shops and events centred on London's huge Arab community which is estimated at 500,000 and which increases in summer when the heat in the Gulf becomes unbearable.
Edgware Road isn’t the only Arab area either. Towards Notting Hill and Kensington, it becomes more glamorous, princes and oil millionaires mingling with the internationally privileged. Commercial activity buzzes on Queensway and the Edgware Road, where there are more shisha bars than pubs, and shops where you can buy za’taar, or Adel Imam comedies, or Libyan or Egyptian newspapers. For a brief term following the destruction of Beirut and before Qatar and the Emirates upped their profiles, London became the capital of the Arab media. It’s still important, still housing such ventures as the independent pan-Arab paper al-Quds al-Arabi.
Qatar’s Al-Thani royal family Supercars clamped outside Harrods
Many Arabs are fleeing repression or poverty in their own countries and remain poor in London in contrast to the flash sons of the Arab Sheiks like Qatar’s Al-Thani royal family who bought Harrods’s and who fly in a fleet of Supercars in distinctive “baby blue” colour. They became particularly distinctive when they were clamped for illegal parking outside the store! With the Arab Spring and the upsurge for Democracy, Freedom and against corruption in the Arab world there is much talk about taking soundings on the “Arab Street.”
Well in London you don’t have too far to go for it is here that different nationalities can meet and contend with a freedom of expression and from oppression which are luxuries in their own country. Chances are that Edgware Road was the “Arab Street” the debates that led to the Arab Spring first took hold and where it will continue in passionate debate over a Shisha and a Shawarma. Marhaban مرحبا
