VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, July 15, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 5A
Ahmed and Raffi’s Hofbrau
A
hmed waxed the hall tiles below
while I changed the ballast in a
fluorescent fixture on the ninth
floor of a building in San Francisco where
I held a winter job as “superintendent of
maintenance.” A fancy title meaning I was a
janitor.
Ahmed and Raffi were janitors too,
recent green card immigrants from North
Yemen before the country was unified.
Between them they
held four jobs. While
Ahmed buffed floors
in our building, Raffi
collected tolls at the
Universal Parking
Garage a block away.
At six p.m., they
traded places. Their
beds were in the boiler
room in the basement
of our building. They
scrambled halfway
around the planet to
work hard for a dream,
to earn enough to open
their very own Arabic
restaurant in San
Francisco.
Ahmed hit the kill button on the floor
buffer and watched my every twist of the
wire nuts. When the ballast was installed
and the bulbs were snapped back into place,
I nodded, and he threw the switch. A slight
flicker, then full wattage from the tubes
bounced off his shiny floor. His teeth flashed
against his black mustache. “You are an
engineer, no G. D.?”
The three of us became weekend pals.
I learned how to say “Allah has given
us a great day” in Yemenese, and taught
them how to interpret the comic strips
in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle.
We wandered Marin County in my truck,
drinking Pepsi while they chose the
mansions where they would live when their
American dream came true.
After spring hit the great divide that year
I went home to Idaho and tended hamburger
on the hoof in the high country until the
summer grass was gone and the trucks came
to carry the cattle down onto the winter
range.
That fall I found a job working with
horses on a tax
write-off ranch 40
miles north of San
Francisco. On my
first Saturday off, I
rode a bus into the
city and went to our
building, where I
found Raffi working
the day shift. He was
every excited to see
me. “Ahmed has done
the restaurant, G. D.,
Ahmed has done the
restaurant. Go now
to see him. Go to the
Hofbrau.” He pointed
down the street.
Ahmed and Raffi
had leased a German restaurant, Rolf’s
Hofbrau, complete with huge lighted signs
of chesty women in dirndls carrying steins
of lager to chubby men in lederhosen who
puffed on long-stemmed pipes. Inside the
restaurant were thin, dark-eyed men in
short-sleeve white shirts, holding cigarettes
between ring and middle finger and drinking
thick coffee from tiny cups.
When Ahmed spotted me, he came
running from the kitchen, clapping his hands
above his head. “G. D. is here! G. D. is
here!” All of his customers stood. Ahmed
introduced me to them one-by-one, and we
shook hands. Each of them offered to buy
They scrambled
halfway around the
planet to work hard
for a dream — to
earn enough to
open their very own
Arabic restaurant in
San Francisco.
me a meal or a coffee or a cigarette.
But I was Ahmed’s pal, in Ahmed’s
restaurant, and it was his privilege to place
a feast before me, to sit with me and hold
my hand and smile as I savored the saffron
and pinon nuts and kebobs. The food was
wonderful.
I asked him when he planned to let the
rest of San Francisco know that he operated
a very fine Arabic restaurant. When was he
going to change the German decor on the
outside of the building?
“Oh, no, G. D. If they know that this is
an Arabic restaurant, someone who does
not like us will bomb us. I have many
Arabic friends, see? They all know that the
restaurant is here. It is much safer to allow
others to think that the Germans still own
this place.”
On the eve of the third winter I had a job
editing a quarterly magazine across the bay
in Sausalito. I rode the Golden Gate ferry
to San Francisco, walked from the piers up
Market Street and found the restaurant cold
and abandoned. In gold script on the transom
above the entry door was a small string of
Arabic characters.
I walked to the original building, where I
found Raffi sitting in the boiler room, lonely,
sad and waiting for a ride to the airport. Five
weeks before, on a Saturday night, Ahmed
was caught in a sting.
The San Francisco chapter of the Society
for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals lodged
a complaint against the restaurant with the
Department of Health, then accompanied
Immigration and Naturalization on a raid
of Ahmed’s restaurant where they found
Ahmed and three of his friends in the
basement, butchering a recently killed lamb
for the feast marking the end of Ramadan.
Somewhere up the power chain, the INS
overlapped with the SPCA. In an unusually
short time, the government revoked Ahmed’s
A visit with the Rainbow Family
By GREG ALEXANDER
For The East Oregonian
FROM THE HEADWATERS
OF DRY CREEK
green card and deported him.
Raffi had no recourse. He was flying back
to North Yemen because he could not work
all four jobs alone. As we hugged goodbye,
Raffi said “You know, G. D., this America is
a very bloody country. You come someday to
live with us, O.K.?”
I asked him about the writing above the
door at the restaurant. “Oh, yes, G. D. I have
taken a picture of it to take home with me. It
says Ahmed and Raffi’s Hofbrau.”
■
J.D. Smith is an accomplished writer and
jack-of-all-trades. He lives in Athena.
Quick takes
Local winners and losers
in transportation package
This is what happens when you vote
GOP on the eastern side of the state — you
get reps that continually vote against your
interests. And then you guys blame the
“liberal west” for never getting anything
done on the east side. Wake up. Enjoy your
new fuel tax.
W
ith all the local attention being paid
to the Rainbow Family gathering,
my wife and I decided rather than
take the word of others about the event we
would see for ourselves. So, on Sunday, July
2, we drove to Seneca, the nearest little town
to the gathering, about three hours south of
Pendleton.
The cashier at Seneca’s small general
store gushed praise about their influx of
visitors. Contrary to rumors about theft or
damage to goods, she said there had been
only good interactions with the campers.
Business was clearly on an uptick and the
owners weren’t complaining.
We proceeded down several miles of
country roads to the encampment. At the
forest road turnoff a small contingent of
law enforcement vehicles were parked and
the road was dotted with no parking signs.
The main parking area was full (though
we managed to shoehorn a spot) and two
auxiliary areas were filling up quickly.
The descending dust from the road and
trail traffic made it easy to spot which tired
Datsuns and multicolored school buses had
been in camp the longest.
The trek from the parking lot to the central
meadow was probably a mile or more, though
tents and tarps were tucked in among the
trees all along the way. A remarkable distance
when we considered how much material was
packed in and out of the camp complex. All
along the trail we were met with smiles and
“Welcome home,” despite our conspicuous
lack of tie-dye clothing and dreadlocks.
After reaching the information tent, a
rough central point of the site, we got a
better sense of the layout and how large
the encampment really was. An estimated
11,000 people were camped out that day and
several thousand more expected.
Individual camps, with names like
“Buffalo Tribe,” “Nacho Mama,” and
“Home Shalom,” were spread out across
the landscape, linked by a network of trails.
Each camp centered around a kitchen tent,
and there were more than 80 of these. Larger
community kitchens would feed anyone,
smaller kitchens tended to just their own
J.D. S mith
— Shane Parker
Extortion, if you don’t vote the way we
want you don’t get any money.
— Colt Hubbell
There is no free lunch, or pork. Some-
body has to vote yes. This is a hard lesson in
natural consequences for the high country,
but next time hopefully their representatives
will admit that roads cost money.
— Joyce Cresswell
Eastern Oregonians
cementing eclipse plans
Photo contributed by Wynn Avocette
One of the many signs around the Rainbow Gathering explaining community
standards.
members. We tasted soup and stir fry in a
couple kitchens and were offered tea at many
others. The “Rough & Ready” kitchen was
one of the most elaborate, with a rock and
mud oven for baking. The vegan lasagna
they were making for dinner smelled terrific.
There was a surprising amount of
infrastructure, including miles of plastic
water piping tied into a nearby spring.
Toilet pits were dug well away from camps
and kitchens. We also saw several massive
teepees — larger than any at the Round-Up.
Workshops were offered in various camps
and casual signage allowed anyone to sign
up and teach what they knew. At “Green
Path” we watched a demonstration on how
to make sauerkraut and sprout grains.
The Granola Funk Theatre (backstage and
all) hosted regular performances, and nearby
was Spirit House, a reflective sanctuary
where campers could display photos and
remembrances of loved ones who had passed
on.
Five hours was only enough time to visit
perhaps a third of the encampment. As we
were leaving, hundreds were gathering in the
main meadow for the evening circle dance,
the area where the entire Rainbow Family
would converge two days later in a silent
prayer for peace.
We talked to one longtime Family
member on the way out. Campers take a lot
of care to be good stewards of the land, he
said. The idea that this was just one big party
wasn’t very accurate.
“This is not a festival,” he pointed out.
“This is a spiritual gathering. All beliefs are
welcome, without passing judgment. I’ve
seen God work here.”
■
Greg Alexander is a Pendleton writer and
editor of Eastern Oregon Parent magazine.
He has already started a batch of homemade
sauerkraut.
Leaving Hermiston at 5 a.m. on the day
of the eclipse and driving toward Baker
City/ Huntington area. Will be packing food
and water for the day in case of bad traffic.
I can’t see gridlock on I-84 out here in the
sticks.
— Chuck Saari
Painted Hills near Mitchell is right on the
line and is viewed as the very best place to
view the eclipse by NASA, NOAA, NWS
and many other organizations.
— Levi Raber
Pendleton plans
reinvigorated fireworks
This is what our city needs, go getters!
I believe our city can pull together for next
year and when I see those fire works go off
I’ll be thinking of Devan’s huge contribu-
tion to make it all happen!
— Jamie Frear
It’s just not the Fourth of July without
fireworks. It’s a shame more people don’t
find it important to donate to the purchase.
— Melissa Lynn Tucker Fisher
LETTERS POLICY
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the
newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual
services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and
include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be
published. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is
that much can be summed up in just a few words.
Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours
@Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian.
com, and keep them to 140 characters.