Mother-daughter duo Sadjia and Mélane are inseparable, spending much of their time together in their family restaurant. When Sadjia found herself running a restaurant in France after fleeing Afghanistan with her husband, and five-year-old Melane, she sought to share Afghanistan’s rich cultural and culinary traditions. Now, she and her daughter share this mission. In a special feature for Mother’s Day, we spoke to Sadjia and Mélane about the Kabul of the past, the feminist values they share, and the art of eating as discovery.
on their morning routines
Sadjia: From 2008 until 2014, when we lived in the city, I went to a gym next to Parc Robert Ballanger in the morning. I used to walk for an hour, but now I’ve lost the habit of going for walks. Since COVID, things have completely changed. Now I get up at 8 a.m. to take my medicine, and then I go back to my bed, where I watch TV and go back to sleep. And then, around 10 or 10:30, I get up again and have breakfast — a cup of coffee or a little bit of bread. Then, I get ready to go to the restaurant around noon. That’s been my daily life for almost two years.
Mélane: My morning is simple. I have to wake my children up — it's not a pleasure! After that, I have to get the girls ready for school. And then it depends on the day. I shop for the restaurant, or I deal with administrative matters, or I clean the house. So, roughly speaking, my morning is taken up by these three activities. At around 11:30 a.m., I get ready to go to the restaurant.
on the kabul of the past
Sadjia: It was good to live in Afghanistan growing up. I had a very happy childhood, poor but serene. I was with my family. I had a feeling of security. The last king of Afghanistan was in power for 40 years. In that time, the only city that was a little advanced, a little modernized, was Kabul, where we lived. When you would go to the countryside, there would be no electricity. Even now, there is no electricity. Development in the country was very slow. People in Kabul were the only ones who had studied, so there is an ignorance that is there. It is a country which is in ignorance. But there is enormous capacity. Even at that time, there were people who became highly educated. There were universities of medicine, engineering, and social sciences. It was our generation that brought the revolution to Afghanistan.
Mélane: In Afghanistan, there was a coup d’etat that overthrew the king in 1973, and then Mohammed Doud Khan was in power until the communist revolution in 1978. Then there were multiple factions on the left, and the right was Islamists. The Soviets invaded in 1979. Opponents of all kinds were imprisoned during the Soviet era. Dozens of people in our family were in prison.
In Afghanistan, the central state manages the whole country. But each province has its governor, and the governor’s law holds in any given place. So Kabul is a bit different from the rest of Afghanistan. What we see in images of Afghanistan today is the harshness of the Taliban state, the situation of women. That was the positive thing about the communist regime. It was the opposite. There was a society that was in the process of flourishing and reforming itself. As my mother said, it was a generation that brought the revolution. This whole generation who had access to school, who had access to university, who wanted a better future for themselves, for their children. And when we see the images of Afghanistan in the old days, we see this Kabul of the ‘60s and ‘70s, where women wore miniskirts and makeup. For those who lived in Kabul, society was like that.
Sadjia: When the Soviets left, we found nothing better than to beat each other up. We have never managed to have stability.
““For a long time, I felt caught between two things, like I’m not totally French and not totally Afghan. I realized that ultimately, it’s not a question of not feeling like you belong, it’s a question of creating your place. I thought: you are a girl, you arrived at five years old, you grew up in this culture, you received your education in this culture. So you draw your knowledge from there, and you draw your roots, which brings you your values. And then you find your well-being, your essence.””
on the journey to france
Sadjia: My husband was a French teacher in Kabul. And since it was the Cold War, all the men had to do military service. We were against the party that was in power in Afghanistan. So at that moment, we decided to leave.
Mélane: We left Afghanistan illegally. We came across some vagrant soldiers along the way, and if they saw that we were coming from the capital, it would have been catastrophic. We had to protect ourselves from the pro-Russian contingent in the capital city. The trip was not supposed to be long, since the road was short, but we ran into problems. We left in December, so I remember a lot of snow and that we made tea with it. And the truck we were in broke down.
I remember feeling a lot of fear. My parents caught another truck. In the first truck, we were really in the driver's cabin. In the second truck, everyone was in the back. My father asked the driver to open it and the truck was littered with people. That's what struck me. My memories are just that: people's faces. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life. I think seeing zombies would have felt the same. Right after we got in, my father banged the wall of the truck, and the truck stopped. So he said, "We'll stay in the snow. We'll continue the road alone." We had to finish the journey on foot, and it was a dangerous passage. I was very afraid.
We arrived in Pakistan, and the next day, we found a car that worked. But it couldn’t go up the mountain, so we walked to get to the other side. There we saw buses that took us to Peshawar. Pakistan at that time was scary too, because there were Mujahideen who killed people like us because we didn’t have the same idea as them.
Sadjia: We didn't think we would be leaving Pakistan for France. We wanted to return to Afghanistan. We thought this was temporary. It was just because my husband wanted to escape military service for a while. But my daughter was not in school. There was no public school for Afghans where we were. We said to ourselves What are we going to do? Fortunately, at that time, France accepted political refugees.
““That was the principle of the restaurant: come, eat, discover. We tried to convey what we felt about our culture through the food.””
on opening their first restaurant
Mélane: There are two restaurants, the one my parents opened when I was eight or nine years old, and the one my mother and I run together now. The first restaurant opened in 1985, it was right next to Sacré-Cœur. I remember it really well. Even though I felt isolated at the time, I have a romantic side to my memories there. My primary school was just down the Montmartre funiculars, and I learned French very quickly. But there was also a side of it that was hard. It was a bit difficult because there weren't many resources. I saw that my parents were struggling. They didn't really want to open a restaurant. It was a proposal from a friend of my father’s. It turned out that it really worked once my mother started to come and work in the kitchen.
Sadjia: For the first six to eight months after I arrived in France, I didn't speak French. I was in a lot of pain — I was isolated and had no family. And I worked in the evenings. At first, when we lived in the apartment above the restaurant, it was okay, because I could go down to the restaurant easily. But when we moved to our house in Aulnay-sous-Bois, it was hard. My husband would call me in the evening if there were a lot of people and ask if I was coming to the restaurant. And at the time, I didn't have a car; I didn't know how to drive. I would run from the house to Villepin station. And I had to leave my daughters at home, all alone.
Mélane: It was a somewhat transitional period. We had already been in France for quite some time, but it takes so long to adjust and we are so caught up in daily life. It was difficult. We had to survive, we had to earn money. My parents lived through this period for a long time. They worked very, very, very hard. There are quite a few Afghans who think that life is more pleasant here. No one tells them that people here have to work hard, that people go through times that are not pleasant. There was a time when a lot of Afghans sent their children to Europe and then, once they arrived, people back home would be saying, send us money, and they would have to tell them that money can't be picked from trees. It's still difficult to get by here. People don't believe that. Because there is such a difference in lifestyle, they think that it's easy here.
““This job, and having so much contact with my mother’s cooking and my mother’s know-how, has developed my palate. I was always the one who tested and tasted. You can’t understand something deeply if you don’t see how it’s prepared over the course of hours, days. And she explains it to me. There’s this transmission.””
on the perception of afghan women
Sadjia: I went back to Afghanistan in 2006. In 2008, when I left, women's rights were terrible. There was so much corruption. Not much has changed.
Mélane: We come from a country where women were mistreated all the time. When you marry a nine-year-old girl to a 45- or 50-year-old man, it’s horror. I had to accept that I come from this culture. In the beginning, when we founded this restaurant, my role in the service was to dazzle with this culture, to advocate for this culture a little. We were part of Persia. We are this country that is so ancient, so culturally rich. But then, of course, we had to talk about wars, politics, gender.
Sadjia: That said, I try to explain to people that the place of women is still important in Afghan society. Throughout the Muslim world, women have a very important place within the family. And I try to explain that we are a country where there are still certain nomadic tribes where the woman is in charge. There’s a diversity of views and situations, as there is in all societies.
on sharing culture through food
Sadjia: When we first started the restaurant, it was difficult because people didn't know Afghan food and culture. We had to attract people and introduce them to it. We made an effort to explain the situation in Afghanistan a little. I worried that people would be stuck on their first image, on what they saw on TV and in the media. I worried that people would think, Yeah, it’s good food, but the people are barbarians. No country would be in such a state if the people weren’t a little crazy. I tried to explain that the Afghans are still good-natured people. We don't deny that our country is a tough country. It has always been tossed between great powers. It's not that the people are just like that, it’s that way because of world politics. For example, Afghanistan has fought with the English several times, with the Russians, now with the Americans. Afghanistan is between major countries — Russia, China, on the other side Iran, on the other side Europe. It has a strategic significance. This is why Afghanistan remained in this state.
So we tried to convey a little about our culture beyond what people thought they knew. But we realized that there was a feeling that happened when people ate. It naturally came through food and somehow, perhaps there is no need to add more. People come away with the positive more than the negative. People could see that it is a family restaurant run by girls and women. Through the restaurant, we could express the Afghanistan that we knew.
““Growing up, I cooked for my family. I like to cook. For me, the way I cook is love. I can’t help but be careful while cooking. If I put a pot in the oven, I can’t help but monitor it. If you want to cook good food, you have to do it from A to Z. You can’t do A, then jump to C. All the way from A to Z, it all has to be done.””
on working together
Mélane: It was hard at first. In the beginning, my mother and I had difficulty reaching agreement. We are two opposite characters. She's very hardworking, and I had barely left high school. It's not that I'm not hardworking, it's that I was slow. I lacked motivation. And while she was full of energy, she imposed things on me that I didn't necessarily accept. But I worked with her rhythm and I wanted to try, little by little, to take more responsibility. We worked like that, and we also discovered ourselves like that.
Eventually, maybe not at the beginning of the restaurant, but subsequently, we arrived at a more equal status. We are a mother and a daughter, but at the restaurant, we are two people with abilities, and we managed something, and we moved forward with it. When I started at the start of the restaurant, I was the little girl who came to help, I had no experience, I had to learn, I had to improve, I had to professionalize.
I never intervene in her kitchen. But over time, I had more and more control over everything else — the administrative side, the service, the reception work. And as a result, I moved forward and became a bit of an entrepreneur, and gained the equality of co-manager, rather than purely a mother-daughter relationship.
Sadjia: Mélane is the one who helped me on this journey. She’s calmer. She doesn't have my character. She is gentler, more patient. A diplomat. She is the reason I was able to succeed with this place. At first I thought it wouldn't work. I was spending money to buy this place and I was so afraid. The advice that Mélane gave me was: trust yourself. Because the cooking I did was good. And that's why, little by little, this place worked.
on intergenerational feminism
Mélane: My mother taught me to become more feminist. It was really seeing the experience that my mother had that made me realize the significance of being a woman. I thought, you are independent, you have your own business, you have your own life. I don't understand why, about certain things, you are still worried about what the family will say, and these other pressures. For me, it seemed much simpler. I also had this pressure on me, I was also aware that if I had been a boy, there were things no one would have cared about. But I didn't understand — the freedom I gave myself, why didn't my mother give it to herself too? I had to try to understand the difference a little. That is what led me to ask myself the question about what it means to be a woman. And that's how I came to see that being a woman has weight. I saw everyone on the same level, everyone in society has their active part in things. But I realized, no, there are still particular injustices towards women.
on marriage
Sadjia: My husband and I lived in a small apartment with his mother. And then his father's family came to the house. I felt like comparatively, my husband didn't love me. And I said to myself, it's better to start from that than to have conflict. It was also a question of tranquility. It was my decision. I told him, “As long as your mom is with you, I'll let you take care of her peacefully, and I'm going to live somewhere else.” And then we'll see.
Mélane: I’ve seen the ups and downs of their relationship. And I’ve never seen my parents get along as well as they do now. They have always been like cats and dogs. But now, it's quite funny, they’re like two kids having fun in a playground. They've never seen each other more now that they live apart.
Sadjia: I spend Sundays with my husband. We do gardening, we go to the market, sometimes we go for a walk. If we go somewhere, we go together.
on reading
Mélane: I was a big reader, but I admit that I read less and less. My daughter says, "You tell me that you are passionate about reading, but I never see you reading." But there are books that are important to me. There are Michael Barry's books. It was through his writing that I discovered the history of Afghanistan. The Kingdom of Insolence is my favorite. It takes you from the Middle Ages through several periods of Persian history and ends in 2001.
There is also One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
I love Les Cavaliers by Joseph Kessel because it talks about my country. At the time I read it, I found it extraordinary that a foreign man could know the country so well.
Sadjia: I haven't read much. When I was young, in Afghanistan, I was forbidden to read. I read Shakespeare’s books, like Romeo and Juliet, but I had to read them in secret. And after that, apart from school books, I didn't read much. In France, I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini which I really liked.
sadjia and mélane’s favorite spots in paris
Mélane: My mother and I spent a lot of time walking around the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont when my daughter was born. We like to go to Ciné 104, and from time to time we like to just walk around Paris, especially in the Marais and Monmartre.
This special feature is part of passerby’s Mother’s Day celebration, honoring the legacies of mothers and daughters — and the traditions, values, and stories that are passed along through generations that define womanhood.
images by clémence polès, edited by meghan racklin and maanasi natarajan