Duha Alhamidi always wears a necklace with a golden map of Palestine and a golden key.

“People in Madison understand,” Alhamidi said, “that I am a refugee from Palestine.”

Alhamidi and Dina Nasser prepared a lavish meal for the Catholic Multicultural Center’s Culinary Passport Series on a recent Friday. The ticketed series, which includes a lecture and dinner prepared by a local chef, brings together several of the center’s programs and initiatives.

The Multicultural Center in Fitchburg provides food to those in need, including immigrants. Its food bank stocks essential items for immigrant communities, including halal meat.

The organization also wants to expose the general public to immigrant culture. Food, according to the center’s deputy director, Becca Schwartz, is an easy and fun way to do that.

The first meal in the series, presented earlier this year in partnership with the African Center for Community Development, was prepared by a chef from Ghana. Nathaniel Sackey runs Holisac Taste of Africa in Sun Prairie. The Palestinian meal in August was the second in the series.

A refugee journey

Alhamidi and her family arrived in Madison in April 2021. Like many Palestinians, she has never seen her homeland. Her grandparents became refugees during the Nakba of 1948 – according to the UN, “the mass expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.”

They ended up in Iraq, where Alhamidi was born 37 years ago, where she is still in a refugee camp. Iraq does not grant refugees citizenship or passports. They cannot buy houses or cars and are only allowed to work in certain sectors.

Despite this, she was able to study and became an architect. She and her husband Uday, a civil engineer, have two children. After the US war in Iraq and armed militias attacked Palestinians, they moved to Indonesia, which accepts Palestinians without passports and where they can apply to enter the US. There, too, they lived in a refugee camp for seven years and were not allowed to work or study. She taught her and other children at home and volunteered at the International Organization for Migration.

They were interviewed by the US Embassy in Indonesia in November 2016, the day Trump won the election. Due to his travel ban on Muslims and other anti-immigration measures, they remained stuck in Indonesia for four more years.

The couple chose Madison because a friend of her husband’s lives here and told them Madison was a great place, especially for families with children. He warned them about the winter, but “we like winter,” Alhamidi said. “I actually like snow. I like the white color.”

Her first year in Madison was tough, but by her second year, her husband, who had trained as a hairdresser, started working in a hair salon. Alhamidi worked at the refugee shelter for a short time and then studied digital marketing at Madison College to understand how to start a business. She was accepted into a master’s program in urban planning at the University of Wisconsin, where she will begin this fall, and landed an assistantship in Dane County.

Alhamidi has also started a catering business, 3DE Mediterranean Cuisine. She hopes to get a spot in the Madison Public Market, where she can employ several refugee or immigrant women and where the food, she says, will be traditional and different from what is offered at other Mediterranean restaurants in Madison.

Layers of taste

Alhamidi prepared the Culinary Passport dinner with Dina Nasser, a Palestinian from the West Bank city of Jenin who is currently working on a cookbook. They served tabbouleh salad with parsley, tomatoes and lots of onion, baba ganoush and creamy hummus, all prepared with lots of olive oil and lemon. Stuffed grape leaves, filled with rice and lamb, were firm and the flavor of the leaves was stronger – and more interesting – than in the usual dishes.

Maqluba, which means “upside down,” is a dish that Palestinians and other Arabs have been cooking for hundreds of years. It consists of rice, meat and vegetables cooked in layers in a pot that is turned over after cooking.

Alhamidi and Nasser demonstrated this technique by turning the pot, drumming it, and then pulling it out to release a beautiful mixture. Their version included lamb, potatoes, eggplant, onions, and grated carrots on top, which added beautiful color. The flavors, including a hint of cinnamon, blended together to create a delicious dish.

Musakhan originated in the West Bank. It consists of fried chicken baked with onions, sumac and other spices and usually placed on flatbread baked in a taboon, which resembles a tandoor clay oven. For this dinner, the cooks stuffed the chicken mixture into a whole-grain flatbread, making it beautiful to look at, easy to eat with your hands and delicious.

The drink was Laban, a refreshing, salty, thin yogurt mixed with mint and lemon. It was so delicious that many people got up to get a second cup.

The tables were decorated with Palestinian flags wrapped in keffiyeh (head scarves), and the evening began with a video of Palestinian landscapes, including Gaza before its destruction.

After dinner, the chefs, all dressed in gorgeous traditional embroidered dresses, spoke with Becca Schwartz of the Catholic Multicultural Center about Palestinian history, culture and food, as well as their own travels, followed by questions from the audience.

The reactions were a mixture of longing, pain, humor and knowledge. Many people stayed afterwards to speak to Alhamidi and Nasser in person. Some (including yours truly) couldn’t resist asking for some food to take home.

The CMC plans to host a Culinary Passport dinner every six weeks. To be notified of upcoming dinners, call (608) 661-3512 to join the mailing list.