The Al-Manar Restaurant in Northeast Philadelphia is closed Sundays. Except this one.
As apple-scented smoke from a water pipe filled the room, five men, Iraqi refugees all, kissed one another on the cheek, shook hands, and said, "Congratulations."
Then they sat, smoking and talking, watching Arabic television, and shouting "monkey" and "coward" when Saddam Hussein's picture appeared. (A typical comment: "You got $750,000. Couldn't you get a haircut?")
The calls started coming in at 5 a.m., from family in Baghdad, friends in Detroit, and all over the world. It was a frozen moment, the men declared. A stark event they could point to and say, That's when Iraq started moving ahead in joy instead of clinging with fear to the past.
"The Iraqi people have been afraid to be happy, because they were scared Saddam would come back," said Majid Jozi, 46, who opened his restaurant in the 300 block of Wyoming Avenue at 10 a.m., knowing his friends and neighbors would gather. There are fewer than 600 Iraqi-born people in the Philadelphia area, according to the U.S. census.
"Maybe now it will be different, better," Jozi said.
Amid sounds of joy, there were also words of caution throughout Philadelphia's Arab and Islamic community.
"I think it's a positive thing - positive that the man is a tyrant and a good thing that we caught him - but . . . this is not the silver bullet which means the U.S. occupation [of Iraq] is going to be over," said Marwan Kreidie, executive director of the Philadelphia Arab-American Development Corporation.
Kreidie, whose ancestry is Lebanese, said the underlying cause of the Iraqi resistance was not Hussein but the American invasion and occupation of Iraq and U.S. participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He said it was time for the United States to address the Middle East situation as a whole, instead of focusing solely on Iraq.
"More bravado, more gloating is not going to be the solution," Kreidie said. "We have to follow this with positive action in the whole Mideast."
Tawfiq Barquawi, a native Palestinian who is head of the local chapter of the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, agreed completely.
"I think it's a very important thing that happened - capturing Saddam Hussein is very important," said Barquawi, who lives in Washington Township in South Jersey.
"But to be honest with you, in my opinion, Saddam Hussein has been down since April 19, when his statue was pulled down."
