Growing community

Markets bring bakeries, which bring restaurants and bookstores, such as Abdallah's Dar AI Hayat Bookstore. Dar A1 Hayat means "home of life" in Arabic. Immigrants follow the businesses into the area to be close to where they work and shop. Newer immigrants move to the area to be close to friends and family who have settled there before them. A large mosque in nearby Garden Grove and a recently opened mosque in Anaheim provide convenient locations for weekly services for Muslim Arabs. A center of Arab-American social activity is the Jerusalem International Restaurant at 808 S. Brookhurst St. Dalai Muhtadi, 36, has operated the restaurant for eight months. From 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. seven days a week, Muhtadi spends her days in constant activity trying to build up her business and overcome the access-rateior new restaurants. But beyond serving hummos and baba ghannouj, Muhtaiy it something of a community diplomat, acting as go-between for religious leaders, business owners, Arab newspaper operators and her seemingly endless stream of friends and acquaintances. With all of the people dropping in for a quick falafel or holding lunch meetings over stuffed grape leaves on the patio, the Jerusalem has an "Everyone comes to Rick's" quality. It shares the shopping center with other businesses catering to Arab-Americans a bakery, an Islamic dress shop and a jewelry store. In coming weeks, a market is expected to move into the space formerly occupied by Sizzler. An adjacent building also houses a Middle Eastern relief organization, the Orange County Arabic weekly newspaper A1 Watan and Abdallah's bookstore. Muhtadi has capitalized on her valuable location to create the meeting place she felt the ArabAmerican community had been mis"It was very natural. I was longing for a communis center. Running a restaurant is sohectic, I hardly have time to socialize. Here, I can see people. "Very often, meetings (of businessmen or religious leaders) are all men. My community got used to seeing me in situations with all men," she said. "Our community has not yet achieved the level of organization or infrastructure of other immigrant communities. The generation that immigrated before me did not do their job. New immigrants have to depend on their families (to get acclaimated to America). They don't know how to access the system," she said. "A lot of immigrants carry some of the fear (of governments back home) to the United States. They think it is the same here. They don't realize that here they are free ".A student of international health, she bills the restaurant as natural Mediterranean cuisine. The recipes come from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well as other countries. Despite the complexity of many Arab dishes, all of the food is made from scratch. Fresh vegetables make up the base for most dishes. Food is cooked in oil or com oil. Muhtadi believes health-conscious Americans can use Middle Eastern food as a doorway to understanding the Arab culture. "We haven't really started to explain our culture (to Americans). We need to show people there are two sides to the story," she said. "We have a beautiful culture." For Advertising Information.