A taste of home, in a new place: This Syrian family close to realizing restaurant dream

Mona Khalil and her family are putting their final touches on a dream they have harboured for years: opening a family-run Syrian restaurant in St. John's.  

"Oh my gosh. We are so excited," she said in an interview. "We wanted this to happen since we came."

Khalil, along with her husband and five children, fled the civil war in Syria in 2013, landing first in Turkey and finally in Canada. In July 2018, they arrived in St. John's, with one thought at the top of their minds: starting a family business. 

As part of an ongoing series that CBC's The Signal is doing on perseverance — each interview introduces someone who has been navigating a challenging journey — Khalil talked to me about her family's path to Canada and making a new home. 

After arriving, and as folks in the local Syrian community got to know them, the family asked about the possibility of opening a restaurant. 

"[People] know that my husband had this experience before, so they were asking us like, 'Why don't you start?" said Khalil. 

The family tried opening a restaurant once before in St. John's, but the location, a rental property, didn't work out for them.

This time, Khalil said, everything is in place because the family waited until they could buy a location of their own. 

WATCH | Mona Khalil tells Adam Walsh about her family's journey to finding safety in St. John's: 

This new Canadian reflects on her path from Syria to putting down roots in N.L.

5 months ago

Duration 15:38

In 2013, Mona Khalil, her husband and their five children in Syria fled to Turkey to escape their homeland’s civil war. Five years later, they came to St. John’s with the dream of starting a family business — a dream, she tells The Signal’s Adam Walsh, that is about to come true.

Khalil said that while the point of a business is to be able to bring in income for the family, the restaurant is much more than that. It's also meant to fill a major gap for the local Syrian community. 

"Food is just so important," she said. "So this is a step that will help people to stay." 

It would also give the diaspora in St. John's a taste of home. 

Can't go back 

For Khalil and her family, there is no returning to Syria. 

"I can't dream to go back to Syria and find Syria. It's another Syria, it's another country now," she said. 

"The same cities are not the same. They are destroyed. The same neighbours are not the same because they are displaced and they immigrated to different parts of the world," she said. "Even some of them passed away like the same neighbours I used to have." 

While they can't return to the place they once called home, Khalil and her family are thriving in their new one. 

In December, Khalil became a Canadian citizen. 

"It was one of the most happy minutes in my life," she said. "It's just a dream that comes true."

Now with the restaurant just steps away from a grand opening on 479 Empire Avenue, in the Mundy Pond neighbourhood of St. John's, Khalil has this to say about their life here.

"We love it and we are staying," she said. 

The restaurant's name, by the way, is Syriana. It means "our Syria" in Arabic.

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