Yasmin Dwedar

AMNA AHMAD: So today is March 20th, 2014 and I am Amna Ahmad from the Brooklyn Historical Society. We are here in my home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. And this interview is part of the Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations oral history project. Now if you would, please introduce yourself.

YASMIN DWEDAR: My name is Yasmin Dwedar.

AMNA AHMAD: And you are an attorney at law.

YASMIN DWEDAR: Yes, I am an attorney.

AMNA AHMAD: Great, thank you. And for the archives, can you tell me your date of birth and where you were born?

YASMIN DWEDAR: [Date redacted for privacy] I was born in Brooklyn, New York.

AMNA AHMAD: Thank you. So to begin, why don't you tell me a little bit about where you come from.

YASMIN DWEDAR: Well, I'm a native of Brooklyn. I grew up in Flatbush for the first five years of my life. And now -- and ever since then I've been living in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, which is also known as Arab Central, and I was born to an Egyptian Muslim father and a Filipina who was Catholic at the time and converted 1:00around my fifth birthday, somewhere around then.

AMNA AHMAD: And just for the information of those who are listening, I was connected with Yasmin through Moustafa Bayoumi, who gave a CBBG programming event in January. So it's interesting that you characterize Bay Ridge as Arab Central. In what ways does it characterize that sense of being Arab Central?

YASMIN DWEDAR: In that many Arabs live here. I mean, you know, I didn't know Arabs lived here, and we lived in Flatbush for at least the first five years of my life, and when we moved here I didn't really have a sense of like Arabs or -- like I didn't know people from different -- what the difference was between like different -- people of different races and different ethnicities. For a long time I didn't even know my mom was Filipino. I thought she was Chinese for a very long time. But, you know, we moved into Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and a few 2:00years ago, I asked my dad. I said, "You know, did you know that Arabs were here when we got here?" And he said, "Actually we didn't know they were here." And so we ended up in a very Arab neighborhood. And I say that because I live in the Bay Ridge Avenue area and just a block from Fourth Avenue is Fifth Avenue, and there's the -- there's a mosque there and then there's several Arab stores, like supermarkets, places that sell sweets. And a lot of people that I run into happen to be Arab. I mean they could be Yemenis. They could be Palestinian. They could be Egyptian. They could be Moroccan. But there's just a concentration of Arabs in Bay Ridge in the same way that there's a concentration of Arabs in Astoria, and really in all of Brooklyn those are the two main places that I've seen like a high concentration of Arabs, usually along a strip. So in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn it would be like usually the Fifth Avenue strip for a couple of blocks. And in Astoria Steinway.

AMNA AHMAD: Perfect. Actually it's interesting that another interviewee made that same connection between the Astoria and Bay Ridge communities as well. So do you have any specific locations in Bay Ridge that are representative of the Arab culture, the stores? Perhaps the restaurants that you're particularly fond of nowadays?

YASMIN DWEDAR: Well, the one business that I always think is quite an experience is Balady Supermarket. I've never seen a supermarket quite like it. They have just a lot of pieces from like the Arab world. They have like the flags. They have the drums. They have like these pieces that are made of -- I guess we call it sadaf, so and it's some kind of like pearl or something like that. They just have a lot of beautiful things from the Middle East that, you know, you can't