Forced to flee Syria, Zina Abboud is now finding success as an entrepreneur in the Netherlands

Photo: Zina Abboud

A year ago, Zina Abboud was one of the countless refugees displaced by the war in Syria. Now, in her new home in the Netherlands, she’s cooking for Dutch royalty.

Zina is the owner of Zina’s Kitchen, a Syrian catering service. Determination, grit and an unshakeable faith in God took her by boat from Turkey to Greece and then by land to her final destination, the Dutch capital of Amsterdam.

In her old life, Zina told My Salaam, she worked as a sales manager at an advertising firm in Aleppo. When the war broke out, she started smuggling medical supplies to refugee camps to help the injured. She was caught one day and asked to turn herself in at the police station. Knowing that she would not make it out alive, she fled to Turkey and started her life anew. But personal circumstances forced her to flee again. “On 1 September 2015, I left for Europe. And I reached Amsterdam on 26 September 2015,” said Zina.

Her journey took her via Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia (where she spent three days in prison), Slovenia, Austria and Germany before she finally reached the Netherlands.

During the first three months in The Netherlands, Zina said that she was so depressed that she barely left her room. “I think the supervisor of the centre where I stayed wanted to help me,” she said. Just before Christmas, Lisa Jansen, a local journalist, visited the centre to invite five refugees to her home for dinner. The supervisor suggested Zina and asked her to pick four others.

Photo: The first meal Zina cooked at Lisa Jansen’s house

At the journalist’s home, the hungry group found no meal waiting for them. Lisa explained that she had bought all the ingredients necessary for a Syrian meal and that it would be nice for the women to cook together. After their initial reluctance, they warmed to the idea. Zina said that cooking and eating the food of the home she had left behind was the first step to her recovery. She believes that the people at the centre had told Lisa about her problem and they had devised a way to help her out.

Lisa enjoyed Zina’s kebabs, hummus and fattoush so much that she spread the word about her culinary skills. Zina didn’t yet have a work permit, so the people who hired her would give her gift coupons at clothing and cosmetics stores in exchange for her meals. Zina said, “When my permit came through, Lisa said, ‘You have a nice face, nice personality and nice food. You should start your own catering business.’ To which I replied, ‘But I don’t have a kitchen.’ And she said, ‘This is Zina’s kitchen’, gesturing to her own kitchen.”

Photo: The Kibbeh she cooked for the Prince Claus Fund dinner

Thus began her new role as an entrepreneur. Thanks to word of mouth, work started coming in. One such project was from the Prince Claus Fund. They were looking for a Syrian chef to cook for 400 people at a ceremony to honour Lebanese chef and food activist Kamal Mouzawak. One of the guests that night was the former Dutch queen and mother of the reigning monarch, Beatrix. “I didn’t know who she was until someone told me,” Zina confessed. Princess Beatrix spoke to her after the meal and thanked her for the food.

Photo: Zina (in white) chatting with Princess Beatrix (in black)

Zina’s plan for her company is to find a space for a professional kitchen. “But it costs too much to set up professionally. So I am still cooking from home or at the kitchens of people who hire me,” she said. “Besides the catering, I would also like to make ready-to-eat meals—hummus, salad and rice.”

She said of her experience, “I lost my home, my job and I haven’t seen my parents in five years.” And yet, in a little over a year, she started a new life, runs her own company in a foreign country and built her support network, achievements she does acknowledge. She said, “I lost my happiness. And now, finally, I am finding it again.”

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