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Pomegranates and politics: the community legacy of a Middle Eastern pioneer

The first in our 2024 series of The Graveyard Shift: Every Body has a Story, exhuming forgotten stories in the Melbourne General Cemetery. Said Sidaoui was a pioneer who brought Middle Eastern food to Australia in the 1960s and ’70s, as well as a staunch communist and Palestinian advocate. Ariana Rigazzi reports.

Pomegranates and politics: the community legacy of a Middle Eastern pioneer

Said Sidaoui’s memorial at the Melbourne General Cemetery. Photo: Ariana Rigazzi

Story by Ariana Rigazzi
 

The name “Said Sidaoui” is engraved in gold in thick polished marble, an elegant monument among many more humble headstones and the patchy grass of the Melbourne Cemetery.

Beneath his name are six glowing titles.

“A remarkable Man. The First to Introduce Middle Eastern Food to Australia. A Proud Advocate for Palestinian Rights. A Proud Communist. A Father, Grandfather, Great Grandfather. A Provider”

Sidaoui was a provider for more than his large family.

Said Sidaoui with his son and daughter in his factory NSM Products. Source: State Library Victoria

Said Sidaoui with his son and daughter in his factory NSM Products. Source: State Library Victoria

Through his importation of Middle Eastern foods and unwavering advocacy for Palestinian rights, Sidaoui was a significant figure in the establishment of Melbourne’s vibrant Middle Eastern community, now the second largest in Australia, according to the Victorian Government.

Born in Lebanon in 1924, Sidaoui and his wife Fatima came to Australia in 1962, part of Australia’s second wave of Lebanese migration, driven by the hope of forging a better life for their family of six.

The young couple opened the first Lebanese restaurant in Australia (according to the Australian Lebanese Historical Society of Victoria) in Melbourne’s CBD and started a business importing Middle Eastern ingredients. NSM Food, now run by the third generation of Sidaouis, supplies restaurants, hotels and specialty shops with products including spices, nuts, dried fruit and Insta-friendly ingredients such as Iranian fairy floss and barberries.

Faddy Zouky, Honorary Consul of Lebanon and owner of the successful café chain Zouki, describes the early years for immigrants like him and Sidaoui as a struggle.

“When the Lebanese arrived in the ’60s, they did not have access to a lot of the services we have today,” Zouky says.

“They spoke basic English, they were working in factories … they didn’t know a lot of their rights, so in a sense they were abused by the Australians.

“My parents used to go and collect the leftover sausages from the Lebanese butchers because the Australians wouldn’t eat them.”

Sidaoui’s daughter, Maha, has written about her life as a first-generation Lebanese-Australian, offering intimate insights into her father and family.

In a short story titled “Checkpoint Charlie” (published in the Hardie Grant anthology Roots: Home is Who We Are), Maha reflected on her father.

“My father, a member of the Communist Party, presumed Checkpoint Charlie was a place where comrades would eat, drink, and recite monologues from Marx or Mao, as they often did when he had his restaurant, Lebanese House,” she wrote.

In fact, Checkpoint Charlie was a Melbourne nightclub in the 1980s and ’90s that Maha and her sisters were desperate to hang out in but knew their father would disapprove. He gave them permission to go when Maha’s sister Helda said she didn’t know the owner’s name “but I hear he’s a big supporter of Fidel”.

Their mother Fatima, who was 13 years younger than her husband, is depicted by her daughter in the story as more lighthearted, the antithesis of her father’s unwavering authority and political zeal.

Maha recalls her family spent many weekends attending protests, driven by her father’s influence.

“Helda and I knew all the chants – they were a highlight of the May Day marches and of every other protest we were dragged along to on weekends, ” Maha said.

“In Dad’s eye, the revolution was around the corner and we would be the next generation to plot it.”

A committed communist, Sidaoui was also a prominent advocate for Palestinian rights. As a member of the Arab-Australia Association, he was frequently interviewed by newspapers.

In 1973,  Sidaoui was quoted in The Canberra Times as the spokesperson  for the Palestinian Arab Solidarity Committee’s protest against then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s decision to permit Australian Jews to travel to Israel to join the 1973 Arab-Israeli Waar.

“We are going to write to Mr Whitlam to stop these young people from going there to sacrifice their lives,” Sidaoui was quoted as saying. “These people are Australians … misled by Zionist Propaganda.”

Advocating so boldly for these issues in the 1970s was highly divisive within the Australian-Lebanese community, given the climate of the Lebanese civil war, according to Fouky.

Yet, it was also a remarkable act of courage – making the case, as Sidaoui did in Sydney’s Tribune in 1970, for “a democratic Palestinian state where Jews, Moslems and Christians have equal citizenship rights”.

About The Citizen

THE CITIZEN is a publication of the Centre for Advancing Journalism. It has several aims. Foremost, it is a teaching tool that showcases the work of the students in the University of Melbourne’s Master of Journalism and Master of International Journalism programs, giving them real-world experience in working for publication and to deadline. Find out more →

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