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<\/p>\nAhmed Ali Mazen can\u2019t remember the last time he missed the call to prayer. <\/p>\n
Five times a day, he heads out the back of his restaurant, Old Jerusalem at 25th and Mission streets, and climbs the stairs to his rooftop, which overlooks the Mission and Bernal Heights.<\/p>\n
He always concludes the routine with a Marlboro Gold and a scorching-hot cup of tea with fresh mint.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s a lifetime away from the farm where Mazen, now age 58, was raised, one of 11 children, in a small village named Saffa in Ramallah, Palestine. His family grew cucumbers, tomatoes, watermelon and, on the village\u2019s mountaintop, olives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Mazen family raised cows, sheep and goats. Mazen had his own pet donkey, which he said he loved dearly. <\/p>\n
\u201cDonkeys were for those who couldn\u2019t afford horses,\u201d he said. \u201cThose who couldn\u2019t afford donkeys walked.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mazen\u2019s donkey was his most prized possession. He would use it to plow the family\u2019s land and carry produce back from the top of the mountain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He looks back on his childhood fondly, remembering the village\u2019s ceremonial olive harvest and the fiercely competitive soccer matches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He and his friends would wait outside the nearby girls\u2019 school in the afternoons, each picking who they said they would one day marry. <\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, we never had the guts to go up to them and introduce ourselves. It was just fun to love from afar. That\u2019s what kids do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mazen was 19 during the first intifada in 1987, a political uprising against Israel in which more than 1,100 Palestinians, many of them children, were killed. <\/p>\n
\u201cNothing was ever the same,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was still in his teens when he left to start a new life in the United States. In San Francisco, he worked all sorts of odd jobs: Bagging groceries at Mike\u2019s on Mission Street, tow-truck driver, and endless kitchen gigs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Next came an arranged marriage. \u201cShe had seen a photo of me beforehand, I didn\u2019t, but I didn\u2019t really care,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI just wanted to get married.\u201d <\/p>\n
His bride was another Palestinian from Ramallah, possibly one of the girls he\u2019d admired from afar during his school days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said falling in love and wanting to raise a family motivated him to be self-sufficient by starting his own business. Mazen felt there was a gap to be filled, that existing Middle Eastern restaurants weren\u2019t serving \u201ctrue\u201d Palestinian food.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One day, Mazen noticed a new \u201cfor sale\u201d sign in a window on his commute home. The asking price was far above his price range, but with loans from a bank, family and friends, he cobbled together enough money to buy it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Old Jerusalem Restaurant opened in 2005. At first, business was so slow that he had to borrow another $40,000 loan from a friend, but eventually it picked up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, 21 years later, Old Jerusalem offers authentic Palestinian dishes like pistachio-crusted lamb chops and Nablusi kunefe, a dessert made of crispy, shredded phyllo, layered with melted cheese and soaked in sweet, fragrant syrup. <\/p>\n
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