Food And Friendship

- Andrea Bennett

ON A WARM SUMMER Monday in July, a few weeks after Ramadan has ended, a diminutive 69-year-old woman dressed in yellow florals and a purple plaid apron stands in front of two giant soup pots. “Brother Kalil,” she says, wielding a massive wooden spoon, “it’s time to add the milk!”

Sabariah Binti Hussein, known by most as Sister Sabria, hums with energy. Today she and a group of eight volunteers have gathered on the top floor of a residential building in Montreal’s Notre-Dame-deGrâce neighbourhood to prepare corn soup, baked potatoes and phyllo pastry stuffed with ground beef to take to the nearby River’s Edge Church community kitchen.

By 3 p.m. things are in full swing. Kalil Sackobah, 26, is helping Hussein make the soup in the apartment where she lives with her husband. The space, warm and inviting, is filled with plants and aquariums that house comet goldfish and African cichlids and bubble away in tandem with the pots on the stove. Down the hall, in two apartments that provide shelter for community members in need, other volunteers work on the balance of the dinner.