At 1.46pm on May 10, The Picha Project made an announcement on their Facebook page that shattered the hearts of their 4,000 strong followers: “We’ve lost our dearest Zaza from the Syrian Kitchen after two months of hospitalisation. It’s a great loss to the world that you have left so soon, Zaza, but your legacy and your kindness will continue to shine in our hearts.”
Mohammad Sad Zaza (or Zaza as he was affectionately known), was a Syrian refugee who worked closely with the social enterprise.
After months of excruciating treatments and copious amounts of medication injected and ingested, Zaza lost his battle with cancer. But on his death bed, the 44-year-old husband and father of one, had a final wish — to cook and give the food out for free to communities in need during the blessed month of Ramadan.
“He didn’t get to fulfil his wish, so we want to make it happen,” say Lee Swee Lin, Kim Lim and Suzanne Ling, founders of The Picha Project, a social enterprise which focuses on empowering marginalised communities by providing a platform for them to cater food.
The trio, who were by Zaza’s side as he breathed his last, kick-started The Zaza Movement, an initiative which sees donations channeled to refugee families under The Picha Project who will cook and distribute these meals to the needy.
FROM BEAUTY TO BLOODSHED
The Syrian war, an on-going conflict rife with bloodshed and human atrocities, is a highly complex geopolitical mess.
The six years of horrific fighting has resulted in one of the biggest humanitarian emergencies the world has witnessed — half of the 22 million people who lived in Syria are now displaced. Five million Syrians fled the country, making it the largest exodus of people in human history since World War Two.
While a majority of Syrian refugees continue to seek shelter in neighbouring countries and Europe, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) state that 1,966 Syrian refugees currently reside in Malaysia. Zaza was one of them.
Like many of his countrymen, Zaza, his wife and 5-year-old son faced great difficulty in finding a place to call home.
In the desperation of fleeing persecution and violence, a significant number of refugees perished in the cruel tide of the Red Sea, while others were sold into slavery by ruthless human traffickers.
Some, like Zaza, were promised jobs in far-flung countries like ours, only to find they were cheated out of the only cash they had.
“He paid US$900 for his flight here. And in the end he found out the job was just a scam,” shares Ling.
Zaza arrived on Malaysian shores in January of 2013, at the same time that the Islamic State (IS) captured the city of Raqqa, where his wife lived and worked as a pre-school teacher.
The city, which was the jihadist militant’s defacto capital, became increasingly dangerous as the days passed. Zaza, who’d been working in Saudi Arabia as a chef then, returned to Raqqa to get his wife and son before fleeing the country.
NEW PLACE, NEW HARDSHIPS
Despite his 14 years of experience as a chef, Zaza couldn’t find a job in Malaysia.
“Even though he could cook extremely well, he couldn’t work in a restaurant here,” the Picha Project team explains, shedding some light on the status of refugees in the country.
While Malaysia has recently discussed the possibility of a pilot scheme for legalising work for Rohingya refugees, it’s not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, making refugees illegal in the eyes of Malaysian law.
“For years in KL, he supplied food to Middle Eastern restaurants and received occasional orders through his Facebook,” explains Ling, adding that it wasn’t enough to sustain his family. Zaza, they share, became extremely demotivated.
But things changed when The Picha Project and Zaza found each other.
“We were given a list of cooks by a micro-entrepreneur programme for refugees to contact and see if we could potentially work together. Zaza was on the list and one of our members contacted him to explain what we do,” recalls Ling.
Zaza had difficulty communicating in English, but as the team points out, was able to translate his intentions through his food.
The girls made an appointment to see Zaza and evaluate the quality of his cooking.
“We informed him that only three of us would be there, but he cooked a feast enough to feed maybe 15-20 people!” they smile, recalling the first time they met him and his family.
“They were all so hospitable and warm. And seeing how much they needed help, it didn’t take us long to decide to bring him on board.”
GIVING IS RECEIVING
“Zaza was one of the pioneers who pushed The Picha Project to where it is today,” confide the trio. “He always wanted to give his best no matter how big or small his order was.”
The team adds that Zaza understood the kind of hardship other refugee families faced when coming to a new country.
“He knew that he couldn’t afford to screw up any orders or else the income of other families would be in jeopardy too,” they explain, adding that Zaza was extremely professional.
But more impressive than his professionalism, was the magnitude of his heart. The team reveals that Zaza would always cook extra food when orders came in, putting aside some to give to the cleaners and security guards where he lived.
Sometimes, he’d even cook extra for the Picha team’s delivery man. When new Syrian refugee families arrived in Malaysia, he would go all out to help them.
“He wasn’t worried at all that the neighbour would “steal” his business if the neighbour joined The Picha Project. He was even willing to teach his neighbours how to be better cooks,” the team recalls fondly.
The trio continues to share many more stories, including the time Zaza started a collection of money and clothes to send to Syria because winter had enveloped the country.
On another occasion, he hosted homeless Arabs and even borrowed money to get food for them, despite not having any financial means of his own. “He had so little but wanted to offer his all to the world,” recalls the team.
WINGS OF AN ANGEL
Zaza was just starting to rebuild his life when in January 2017, he begin experiencing dizzy spells. By March, he could no longer cook and was admitted to the critical zone of the emergency ward.
Affording medical treatment as a refugee in Malaysia is virtually impossible, but that was the very moment Zaza understood just how many people felt indebted by his kindness — within a week of asking for financial assistance for Zaza’s medical bills, the public and The Picha Project’s clients collected RM16,000, a sum which covered his hospitalisation fees and rental of the home where his wife and son lived.
But no amount of money could stop the cancer from stealing Zaza’s second chance at life.
“The moment the life-support machine showed that his heartbeat stopped was the most painful moment,” confide Lee, Ling and Lim, fighting to hold back their tears.
By Zaza’s bedside stood his best friends, the Picha team, his beloved wife and his son, who kept crying asking for his Baba.
“We want to remember a man who went through war, escaped, rebuilt his life and lost it again but could still think of others when he was bed-ridden and in pain,” they say of the movement.
The team believes that an initiative like this can foster unity among people, inspiring ordinary folks to make greater impacts in their communities by simple acts of kindness.
It’s been more than a month since the angels took him away but the void is still felt by those who knew and loved him.
As Lim wrote in a post before the Zaza Movement started: “Zaza, we miss you so much. I looked up to the sky and called your name a few times. We’re ready to announce your movement and fulfill your wish. Be with us in spirit and watch your movement grow, for more people need to know the man who had so much to offer when he had so little.”
Lim is looking in the right place. As they say, the stars really do belong to the sky.
THE ZAZA MOVEMENT
How it works:
With every donation of RM150,half goes to refugee families under The Picha Project to fund their cooking.The other half goes to operation cost, packaging and delivery under The Picha Project. All the food cooked will be given out to communities in need.
NOTE: The rest of the profit goes to reinvesting into the business to provide cooking workshops, language classes and upgrade cooking equipment for families to further enhance their skills in cooking.
To find out more go to https://www.facebook.com/thepichaproject/