Everyday life in Australia was not a picture I could easily paint in my mind. There seemed to be a stereotypical, mass media induced pattern of images that circulated in my mind when asked to think about Australia. Such montages include broad, white-sand beaches and vast, kangaroo-filled valleys. Perhaps, after becoming more informed, images of sunburnt locals in pubs, drinking Victoria Bitter and eating Vegemite. In one sense these images are quite accurate. However, having only these images gave me a very polarized depiction of a two-reality Australia; that of the Aboriginal people and that of the white Australians, with the former being far more vague and unfamiliar than the latter.
Perhaps it was due to my preconceived notions of Australia that engaging with Sydney left me unfulfilled. There were numerous options of things to do, but there wasn’t much variety. For long I thought maybe, Australia really is just a pretty, yet culturally-deprived, big island. Everyone seemed to be doing the same activities, eating different iterations of the same foods and talking about the same, partially stimulating topics just at different times of day, in different locations. There are places though, where such images are nowhere to be found. There are places where multicultural images prevail.
Located 12 kilometers south west of the heart of Sydney, and considerably far from any renowned beach, Lakemba — a town of neither white Australian nor Aboriginal people — has remained relatively isolated from tourism. Lakemba’s visitors did not take a wrong turn, go down the wrong street or board the wrong train, nor did they stumble upon it during their stroll. Apparently, over the years, Lakemba has become known as the center of Lebanese Australian life.
Lakemba came up on my radar very late in my residency in Sydney. My excursions, like those of most study-abroad students, were limited to mostly central areas and beach towns. Marty, a twenty-something second-generation Lebanese Australian, was the reason for my trip to Lakemba. I met Marty through my friend Riya, who later invited the two of us to Lakemba for a “cultural and culinary feast”. Upon finding out that I was bored with Sydney, he “thought it was about time that changed.” Marty’s vocabulary consisted almost exclusively of Australian slang, spiced with words like “khalas” and “habibti.” I was intrigued to see how an Australian Little Lebanon would be on the last night of Ramadan.
Thirty minutes into the train ride, the buildings become lower and lower. No floor-to-ceiling glass windows like the modern skyscrapers of CBD, or pale blue colonial mansions like the beach houses of the Northern suburbs. Exiting the train station on the night of the Ramadan street market, you can simply find your way by ear as the sounds of people vibrantly congregating on the streets and faint Arabic music over low-quality speakers illuminate the way to the main street market. The sun has set. The air is chilly verging on cold but colourful traditional wear peeks out from underneath heavy black jackets, left partially unzipped. Men and women wear mostly red, orange and yellow long linen tops adorned with gold and silver beads, sequins and sparkles. People linger outside to move around and gather goods, waiting in long lines, sipping Lebanese coffee — which I discovered is Turkish coffee but better, as it is cardamom-infused — and getting small discounts if their payment is in cash. The streets are flooded with people, but most of them, along with my group, retreat to the inside of a restaurant when it’s time to sit and enjoy their meal.
The restaurant we sat in resembled most others in terms of colour palette and set up. We sat in a stark yellow painted room decorated with posters of the dishes, on long rows of tables comprised of smaller, dissimilar tables pushed together. The meals, all in to-go containers and eaten mostly by hand, were not solely Lebanese, nor strictly Middle Eastern. Bangladeshi and Pakistani dishes also made an appearance, given the large South Asian demographic of the area. Whatever their origin, they were not adjusted for Anglosaxonic taste buds. Every bite burst with familiar flavors I had been deprived of for a long time — you see, Australian cafes and restaurants consider salt enough of a seasoning that they needn’t provide anything else. And then, here they were; kumin, curry and saffron.
The energy, the smells, the sounds, the visuals all acted as different instruments in a musical composition of cultural celebration that I had failed to discover anywhere else in Sydney. Until then, Sydney was to me simply Australian, perpetuating the pattern of just two worlds. Lakemba, the small suburb of Sydney, NSW, actively broke this pattern of imagery that occupied my mind, and it reawakened my senses.