Where stories hang thick as smoke
My apologies to Amin Ghrab and Nashat Abdula, who run Ali Mama Cafe.
The last thing I wanted to do, on my first attempt to smoke hookah and look cool doing it, was drop the water pipe on the concrete floor and shatter the glass.
“It’s OK,” said Ghrab.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Abdula.
Nice of them to say, but I could tell that the reaction of their customers was along the lines of: “What’s up with this nitwit?”
What’s up with this nitwit is that I drove by the Ali Mama, on Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake, after a Dodgers game and decided to see what goes on in there. It’s a bustling hole-in-the-wall Middle Eastern coffeehouse, and I thought it might be a good place for a different take on local and world affairs than I ordinarily get.
“The only politics here,” Abdula claimed, “is the hookah.”
OK, so maybe if I gave it a try, the other customers would warm up and speak freely.
The pipe resembles a bicycle pump, with a vase-like glass bottom, a long hose and a chalice on top, where the tobacco is stuffed under burning coals. Ghrab and Abdula set me up with a stash of double apple tobacco and told me to go ahead and take a hit.
At first I couldn’t get it to draw, and watched out of one eye as men born in Tunisia, Egypt, Armenia and other points east noted the ineptitude of Mr. Points West. Then, with Abdula’s coaching, I got a good tug. Too good. I’m pretty sure I blew a hole through one lung and had smoke coming out of my ears.
“Don’t inhale,” Abdula said while suppressing a laugh.
After a while I got the hang of it and enjoyed the sweet taste, even if my doctor would have disapproved.
Inside the cafe, two intense games of gin rummy were underway. At the outdoor table next to me -- not far from a Harry Potter billboard -- two men played backgammon. Adel Hakim, Egyptian-born supervisor for a parking lot company, is unbeatable, according to house legend, sometimes playing up to 10 hours without a defeat.
Really, Abdula insisted, Ali Mama isn’t the place to hear commentary on the war in Iraq or U.S.-Middle East relations. The patrons work hard as valets, mechanics, chauffeurs and gas station managers, and they come to the cafe to unwind with hookah, tea, games and casual conversation about work, family, the price of real estate.
So how did Abdula come to own the place, which opened a year ago?
He managed two Winchell’s doughnut shops after arriving from Egypt, he said, and fell in love with one of his employees. They got married and had kids, and he’s trying to make a better life for them by investing in a business of his own, even as he manages an Arco station in East L.A.
I asked if his wife was from Egypt too.
“No,” Abdula said. “She’s from Guatemala.”
I may have to retire. There’s no way I’ll ever find more of an L.A. story than that.
On the back patio of Ali Mama two young Latino men shared a table. The older of the two, 22, said he was born in El Salvador and lives in South-Central Los Angeles. He’s such a regular that Ali Mama taped his name to a pipe that’s reserved just for him.
Same with Julien, an African American who works at a West L.A. restaurant. I sat and smoked hookah with him and his friend Takiya.
Julien said curiosity got the best of him too when he drove by months ago and saw the Middle Eastern crowd. Like me, he thought he might hear more political chatter, but it took several visits before people opened up. Since then, he said, Ali Mama has been a place where he and his Muslim hookah brothers chip away at stereotypes and misconceptions about one another.
“What I hear from them is: ‘This is how I want to raise my kids. I love America, but I want America to love me too,’ ” said Julien, 34. “My fundamental value system is the same as theirs.”
Julien said he went to another hookah joint recently on Melrose, but he’ll never go back
“I went to the door,” he said, “and they asked me what the password was.”
If it was too trendy for him, I better take a pass too. Just as I was getting the hang of the hookah and feeling pretty smooth, I stood up to go back out front and the bottom half of the glass pipe came apart and exploded at my feet.
It’s probably a safe bet Ali Mama won’t be putting my name on a hookah any time soon.
Out front, the backgammon champ was mercilessly beating an Egyptian-born Jew whose family was kicked out of Egypt after the Six-Day War, resettled in Israel and then moved to Boyle Heights.
Next I found myself at a table with two men in their 30s who have been friends since their childhood in Tunisia. One, who works in a mail service center, had just returned from the old country, where he’d gone for his mother’s burial. The other, who works as a valet, was asking him what it’s like in their old hometown.
Has he not visited lately, I asked?
He can’t go back, he told me. His family disowned him after hearing he had converted from Islam to Christianity in Los Angeles.
As 2 a.m. approached and hookah smoke hung over Sunset, the night seemed young, the city vast and the stories endless.
