Editor’s Note: Before he moved to the United States, Amir Al Tamimi served as an interpreter and field reporter for various American media in Iraq.  This is the first in an intermittent series of stories by Tamimi about the growing Iraqi community in the City of El Cajon, home to Grossmont College.

EL CAJON –Who could know that a car wash business in San Diego could lead to the establishment of Ali Baba, a popular Middle Eastern restaurant in this city that, after Detroit, has the second-largest concentration of Chaldean Iraqis in the United States?

The owner, who prefers to be identified as “Steve” because he fears for relatives still living in Iraq, arrived in the United States 20 years ago and started his his new life in Detroit.   Then he decided to move to San Diego County after one of his friends suggested that the community here is becoming bigger every day. Ambitious to make a financial success, he opened a car wash business with a couple of investors. Subsequently, he bought their shares to transform the car wash into a family business for his own .

After ten years of hard work and success, he decided to seek other business opportunities, including the Ali Baba restaurant.

The style and the decoration of the restaurant’s interior gives visitors the impression that they are sitting in a small tent in the wild desert of the Middle East, a tent filled with decoration and paintings.  The ambiance is enhanced by Arabic music and belly dancing pictures, evoking memories of the imaginative stories from 0ne Thousand and One Nights, as well as the ancient story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, who stole big treasures and hid in the mountains .

Steve’s friends originally discouraged him from taking on the restaurant, counseling him that there were more secure investment opportunities in local convenience stores and gas stations — a sector of the economy to which many Chaldean Iraqis have gravitated.

Nevertheless, Steve pursued the creation of the restaurant, and, keeping in mind his friends’ advice, made investments in other properties in the area so that he would have diversified income streams.

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Al Tamimi is a student in Media Comm 132A.  He may be contacted at [email protected]