040 brownbook magazine

COLLECTORStory by Tom Spender

Artwork by Susan Hefuna Hess

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041

Yet despite immersing herself in art, the

princess has never herself felt compelled to put

brush to canvas, sculpt heavenly bodies or wire

up a fiddly multimedia montage.

“I’m not an artist at all,” she says. “That’s

why I enjoy being in the art world so much. I

love to be around creative people. I think being

an artist is about feeling the urge that you must

create something and for me I have just never

had that urge.”

She worked in commercial art for more

than three years before quitting to focus on her

own collection and on her work with non-profit

organisations.

A summer internship at Goldman Sachs in

London was enough to persuade Princess Alia

al Senussi that banking was not for her - she

wanted something “more out of the box”.

But she could not have imagined that her

first foray into the art world - in which she had

become interested while visiting Switzerland’s

Basel Art Fair during her student days - would

see her dispatched within a week to a remote

Egyptian oasis many hours' drive from the

capital Cairo.

Yet the oasis town of Siwa, where the

princess was to work managing famous artists

exhibiting at an eco-resort as part of the Siwa

Patrons Project, would also be as close as she

has ever come to the country whose royal

family she is a member of - Libya. Marooned

amid endless desert sands, Siwa is Egypt’s

westernmost oasis and lies about 100km from

the Libyan border.

Princess Alia’s father is a member of the

royal al Senussi family, who were exiled from

Libya in 1969 when General Muammar Gaddafi

seized power in a coup and declared himself

leader of the Libyan Arab Republic. Princess

Alia’s grandfather, Prince Abdallah al Senussi,

was a political leader in the government under

King Idris. He was in Turkey during the coup.

Princess Alia herself was born in Washington

DC to her Libyan father and American mother,

spending part of her childhood in Cairo, going

to school in Switzerland and studying in the US

before moving to London. However, visiting

Libya has so far proved impossible.

“In exile, one tries to be the best possible

example of oneself and portray the family in the

best possible light,” says the 26-year-old.

A mixed background and her experience of

living in the West while also having a Middle

Eastern identity has shaped the princess’ taste

in art, drawing her to artists such as Susan

Hefuna, who is of mixed Egyptian and German

parentage, and Kader Attia, who grew up in a

family of Algerian migrants in the tough Paris

suburbs.

“I’m drawn to Middle Eastern art because

of the context of my own life,” she says. “Most

of the artists I admire are Middle Eastern but

rarely living there for political, educational or

family reasons. Through art, they forge their

identity of being Arab or Iranian but living in

the West.”

She has joined the newly-formed Tate

Committee for Middle Eastern and North

African Acquisitions, which was formed last

summer and whose members scour the world

for Middle Eastern art to exhibit at the London

gallery. Her other positions include working

with Art Dubai, an art fair now in its fourth

year and attracting participation from about 30

galleries, and Edge of Arabia, which works with

Saudi Arabian artists.

These two collaborations illustrate both

the challenges many artists in the Middle East

face and the rapid progress that the region's art

industry is making, she says.

Two of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent

artists are Abdulnasser Gharem, a major in the

Saudi army, and Ahmed Mater, a practising

doctor. Both have “day jobs” because, like many

Middle Eastern countries, Saudi Arabia does not

yet have an “art infrastructure” of local galleries

and museums with fellowships that help to

support young artists, Princess Alia says.

“The primary concern now is to enable these

artists to immerse themselves in being artists

and foster their talent,” she says. “Censorship

and issues about what you can or cannot do are

something for the people there to discuss once

they’ve been able to create an art community.”

Further down the Arabian Peninsula in

Dubai, Art Dubai, along with the arrival of

Christie’s auctioneers in the emirate, the

Sharjah Biennale, Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island

project featuring the Louvre and Guggenheim

and Qatar’s “awe-inspiring” Museum of Islamic

Art are “forging the way” for art in the Middle

East, according to the princess.

“The success of Dubai will be pivotal in

the international side of the Middle Eastern

art market,” she says. “The Guggenheim

and Louvre will also define how artists and

non-governmental agencies participate in the

development of art and culture.”

These are exciting times to work in the

Gulf’s nascent art world, yet that’s not where

Princess Alia wants to be. Her aim is to involve

herself with non-profit groups helping develop

artists and art education across the Middle East

and, specifically, Libya.

“Libya has not yet fully participated in this

Middle Eastern art boom,” she says. “I would

love to be able to be the one to build that bridge.

It’s my dream.”

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Tony Kitous is an energetic man. He arrived

in London from his native Kabylie region

in Algeria 23 years ago aged 18 and by 22

had opened his first restaurant. By 2008 he

had become a successful restaurateur with a

string of stereotypically opulent 1001 Nights-

style Arabic restaurants – but he wanted to do

something different.

The result was Le Comptoir Libanias, a

bright and airy “mini-souk” where customers

can pop in to pick up a coffee, sit down to some

fresh mezze, take a wrap back to the office or

buy a tagine for dinner at home. While in any

of Le Comptoir's four branches, they can also

learn about and buy the spices used in Levantine

cooking and browse books about the region.

“Our customers are from everywhere and

from all walks of life and more than half of them

have never had Middle Eastern food before

because it has never been presented to them,”

he says.

London has a high profile in the Arab world.

It is one of its intellectual capitals, home to Arab

newspapers and satellite TV stations. And it is a

preferred holiday destination for the 1.5 million

Arabs estimated to visit each year, many during

the summer months to escape the stifling heat of

the Arabian peninsula.

Yet Arabs themselves – about 500,000

living in the UK – do not have a similarly high

profile in London compared to other groups

such as those from the Indian subcontinent,

whose restaurants are an integral part of British

everyday life.

This began to change with a surge of

enthusiasm for shisha smoking, but the anti-

smoking law of 2007, banning smoking in any

place of work, dealt the shisha a heavy blow by

forcing smokers out onto the pavement and into

the teeth of London’s appalling weather.

Yet for Kitous, light, tasty, fresh and healthy

Lebanese cuisine is the perfect vehicle for him

to create something universal while also using

“shaabi”, or popular, design elements that

remind him of his childhood in north Africa.

“What I love is seeing art students, nurses,

people from everywhere and also perhaps an

Arabic couple where the woman is veiled and

you can see that they are taking pride in what

they see. It’s a place where everyone feels like

they belong,” he says.

While Arabic food culture is emerging from

its Edgware Road origins, it remains concentrated

in West London, with the newest cluster to

LONDON

Story by Tom Spender

Pictures courtesy of café owners

Historically, Arabic cafés have never played

much of a part in London’s mainstream café

culture. The Arab café culture in areas such

as Edgware Road was by Arabs for Arabs.

Now entrepreneurs say this is set to change

with an explosion in popularity of modern,

cheap and tasty Levantine and North African

establishments, which could eclipse Italian and

even Indian dining in years to come. Arabic food

in London, they say, is an idea whose time has

come.

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148 brownbook magazine

be found in Shepherd’s Bush, a multicultural

community near the BBC’s Television Centre,

where recent Syrian and Lebanese arrivals have

opened supermarkets and restaurants.

Just around a corner is the Adams Café. A

truly multicultural establishment, it is run by

Frances and Abdel Bekraa, a British-Tunisian

couple who met in Paris and ran a hotel together

in Tunis before moving to London, buying the

traditional “greasy spoon” English café and

creating a unique experiment.

By day, the couple serve up traditional

English fare such as hash browns and

steaming tea to a loyal clientele of builders and

municipality workers. During the afternoon

their staff transform the place into a Tunisian

restaurant, switching to much softer lighting

including oil lamp-style candles, removing the

ketchup bottles from the formica tables and

putting table cloths over them and pulling out

the blackboard where the menu is chalked up to

reveal rows of drinks.

“I and my husband are completely different

and we enjoy meeting people form different

walks of life,” says Frances. “The original plan

was to fully convert the café into a restaurant,

but after 20 years we are still doing English

breakfast in the morning because it’s what the

area needs.”

These bright new recession-busting cafes

popularising Arabic food and culture exist

alongside more aspirational venues, such as Mo

Café, one of three interlinked venues in the heart

of London’s West End but designed to evoke a

small souk housed in a Moroccan Riad. Momo

Restaurant Familial was set up by restaurateur

Mourad Mazouz, who also runs Almaz, housed

in Dubai’s Harvey Nichols store in Mall of the

Emirates. Mamounia Lounge, in London’s posh

Mayfair district, is another place to see and be

seen of an evening.

Back in Edgware Road, traditional Arab

cafés such as Al Shishaw continue to dish out

strong Arabic coffee in exuberantly-decorated

suroundings to a loyal Arab clientele that packs

it to the rafters when Cairo’s notorious football

derby between Zamalek and Al Ahly is on.

But if Edgware Road is the heart of London’s

Arabic café scene, everywhere else in the city

represents opportunity for an idea whose time

has come.

There are now about

10,000 words in the

English language derived

from Arabic, including admiral

and lemon. The word café derives from

coffee, which itself has Arabic (qahwah)

and Turkish (kahvah) origins.

The first Arabs arrived in London in

the year 30AD with the Roman army.

Trading links between London and

the Middle East were established

around the 16th century and from

the early 20th century populations

of Arabs began to arrive in the city,

with a few Yemeni seamen settling

in the East End and Iraqis setting in

West London in the 1930s. In 1948,

large numbers of Palestinians

arrived in the wake of the “Nakba”

and the 1970s saw Lebanese fleeing

their country's civil war also come to

London. The 1970s also saw greater

numbers of newly wealthy Gulf

Arabs visiting London in the wake of

the oil crisis, when rising oil prices

began filling the coffers of once poor

states.

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Adams Café: 77 Askew Road

Run by Frances, an Englishwoman, and her husband Abdel Bekraa, the

Adams Café found fame in the 1990s economic slump as a place offering

tasty fare at recession-busting prices. Twenty years on and they are still as

popular as ever, offering three set menus ranging from £11.50 to £16.50

in price. Named in Time Out London's Top 100 eating and dining list for

2009.

Le Comptoir Libanais: The Balcony, Westfield Shopping Centre, 65

Wigmore Street, O2 Centre, 255 Finchley Road,

26 London Street,

New series of bright cafes offering healthy Middle Eastern food and drink,

delicatessen and a host of other funky Middle Eastern products in a mini-

souk, including books, hand-embroidered bags from Marrakech and mezze

plates and tea glasses. Named London’s Best £10 Meal and awarded the

runner-up prize for Best New Design by Time Out in 2009.

Mo Café: 25 Heddon Street

Mo Café describes itself as a Marrakesh-souk-meets-Parisian-troquet style

cafe and bazaar. All the furniture in the café is on offer for sale and there

are also books, CDs and antique jewels to be had. The cafe is attached to a

restaurant and a bar with live music and gets consistently good reviews.

Mamounia Lounge: 37a Curzon Street

Reviewers rave about Mamounia Lounge’s opulent décor, featuring raw

silk cushions, low-level seating as well as dimmed lighting, candles

and incense for chic lunches and exotic evenings. Attracts a well-heeled

clientele.

Al Shishaw: 51-53 Edgware Road

Huge Egyptian-style coffee shop on Edgware Road, the heart of London’s

Arabic community, with old-school decoration and a big screen for big

Arab football matches.

If you want an authentic shisha-smoking experience on the pavement of

London’s most Arabic street, this is where you’ll find it.

What’s the concept behind Le Comptoir Libanais?

I could breathe this idea in the air. The Chinese, Japanese

and Indians have all made their foods a fixture so why

not the Arabs? Now I'm feeding something like 20,000

people a week in my cafes. People are saying: Oh my

God, how come I've never had this kind of food before?

It's about making Arabic food and culture accessible to

the British High Street. We were actually late with this

idea. But I don’t consider myself to be a trendsetter. I

simply put something together that I thought I would

be proud of.

You’re from Algeria. Why choose Lebanese rather

than North African food for Le Comptoir?

Certain foods are meant to be eaten at home while others

are for eating out. Lebanese food is both. With Lebanese

food, you don't need to be familiar with it to understand

it and you can fall in love with it the first time you eat it.

It's also healthy and light and has a huge repertoire. In

the next 10-20 years I'm confident that Lebanese food

will become more popular than Indian food here.

What’s your next project?

I want to take the macho out of the shawarma, so I’m

launching Shawa, a shawarma place in the Westfield

Shopping Centre with an all-female team dressed in

pink. In the UK, the kebab has a bad reputation. It is

considered unhealthy and as something that men eat

after a night out. But I will offering organic chicken, fish

and duck shawarmas along with salads and pomegranate

seeds. It will be the kind of thing you can eat and then

go back to an important meeting. When I see that the

majority of the customers are female I will know I have

succeeded.

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