With qawwali and couscous, a New York café is bridging cultural chasms – and winning loyal fans

A few months ago, when Sadia Khatri, a young writer from Karachi, was helping organise a tribute in New York for Sabeen Mahmud, the Pakistani human rights activist killed in 2015, she didn’t think twice before suggesting that it be held at Barzakh Café.

Located in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighbourhood, Barzakh Café was the perfectly intimate venue at which to honour Mahmud’s memory. As the event unfurled on her tenth death anniversary in April, 30-odd people sat on the carpeted floor, reading poems, singing songs they associated with Mahmud and sharing lessons they had gleaned from the feisty activist.

Barzakh Café, said Khatri, “was just so warm”.

That’s exactly the atmosphere El Atigh Abba, an immigrant from Mauritania in Northwest Africa, had been seeking to create when he founded Barzakh Café in mid-2024. He wanted the establishment to look and feel like the house in which he grew up in Nouakchott.

The café’s performance area is arranged to resemble his old living room and the backyard has been inspired by the garden behind his childhood home – complete with a mango tree.

Most of all, Abba wanted the space to be a “social experiment” to bring together the diverse residents who represented New York’s rich cultural mosaic. That ambition is...

Read more