Asma Khan almost didn\u2019t make it to her talk at the Santa Fe Literary Festival. The decorated chef and cookbook author set up a caf\u00e9 in a Yazidi refugee camp in Iraq in 2019, offering training to girls who had been sold into slavery by Isis. It was an audacious thing to attempt, unusual for a chef who had only recently starred in the Netflix series Chef\u2019s Table and set up her own restaurant in central London. \u201cI asked for volunteers for chefs and the only girl who put her hand up was a girl who stammered a lot,\u201d Khan says during a tea-and-conversation event in New Mexico. \u201cShe was 19 years old, and later on I discovered that she could speak, but because she was the only virgin in her village, she was passed around by [Isis members] \u2014 and she lost her ability to speak.\u201d That teenage girl, who Khan summarily trained and who found meaning through working at the caf\u00e9, has never left her mind.<\/p>\n
How does such worthy work lead to an immigration nightmare? Khan was surprised to be initially told that she wouldn\u2019t be granted entry to the United States when she prepared to depart for the festival in Santa Fe. Because she\u2019d travelled to Iraq, she\u2019d been automatically denied, with no room for nuance or discussion. \u201cI thought that after Trump, the rules would have changed,\u201d she said, \u201cbut no.\u201d It was only through the hard work of a number of festival representatives \u2014 and the willingness to jump on whichever flight she could \u2014 that she ended up in New Mexico this week. Although it was an ordeal, she says, it wasn\u2019t entirely a surprise: \u201cWith a name like mine, immigration is always challenging. Even with a British passport, in England.\u201d<\/p>\n
A proud Muslim woman who was born in India before moving to the UK in 1991, Khan now heads up the only female-founded, all-female kitchen in the world. She\u2019s frank about what that actually means. When she scouted out bigger locations for her already wildly successful restaurant, she was asked repeatedly: \u201cDo you have a business adviser? Who\u2019s the man with the money?\u201d And ultimately it was only the pandemic \u2014 and the subsequent failure of a number of male-owned businesses \u2014 that allowed her to move into a prestigious spot in Covent Garden. Now she\u2019s again on the market for a space, and \u201cbecause the pandemic is over, I\u2019m suddenly finding people are more hesitant\u201d again, she says.<\/p>\n
Asma Khan (Urszula Soltys\/PA)<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Khan believes there are some clear advantages to her outsider status. \u201cI don\u2019t get invited to the iftar at Downing Street, I don\u2019t get invited to events with the sophisticated and the elite, but I rattle every cage I can,\u201d she says, \u201c…In that boys\u2019 club of hospitality where everyone knows everyone, I don\u2019t owe anything to anyone. I\u2019m free.\u201d<\/p>\n
She revels in that freedom, unafraid to talk about the difficult issues. \u201cI\u2019m very political,\u201d she says, without apology. \u201cAs an immigrant, I want everyone to know you cannot take my clothes, you cannot eat my food, you cannot have my culture if you don\u2019t also take me. British people who tell people who look like me to \u2018go home\u2019 \u2014 what were you doing in my country for 200 years? And here [in the US], they want to keep the Mexicans out, but everyone wants to eat tacos!\u201d<\/p>\n
Khan doesn\u2019t like the term \u201ccultural appropriation,\u201d because she thinks there is great power and connection in sharing cultural outputs \u2014 but she has little respect for people who refuse to acknowledge colonialism or welcome immigrants while still professing to enjoy a biryani or a cup of chai tea. \u201cAs a Muslim immigrant, this [cookbook] is my conversation with my first country,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is the bridge I\u2019m building.\u201d She hopes that people can enjoy her food and have nuanced conversations about its historical context at the same time.<\/p>\n
Khan deconstructs her own past with the same verbal scalpel that she uses for political commentary. She is the first college-educated woman in her royal Indian family, where the expectation was that you\u2019d be \u201cmarried at 18 and a grandmother at 32,\u201d just like her grandmother. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t look pretty,\u201d she said. \u201cI was the fat, ugly one \u2014 I wasn\u2019t going to be married off at 18 \u2014 so my family had to send me to college. I didn\u2019t fit into the image of the \u2018good princess\u2019.\u201d She graduated with a PhD in law, and pivoted into cooking after marrying and moving to England (\u201cIt\u2019s an arranged marriage, which is different from a forced marriage \u2014 it\u2019s more like speed-dating.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Though people tried to tell her that cooking wouldn\u2019t lead her anywhere, Khan never doubted the inevitability of her own success. \u201cI never was afraid that I would not succeed,\u201d she says, detailing how she said affirmations in front of the mirror regularly. Now, she is hyper-aware of her own privileges and determined to send the elevator back down. \u201cI want to be on the right side of history,\u201d she says. \u201cI won\u2019t be silent, because silence helps the oppressor.\u201d She is comfortable being who she is \u2014 \u201cI am Muslim, I don\u2019t drink alcohol, I dress in my traditional outfits\u201d \u2014 in a world where she often looks like the odd one out. \u201cI need you to hear me say this in my accented voice,\u201d she says as she details her business acumen, demonstrating that sometimes simply speaking at all is its own form of rebellion.<\/p>\n
Khan wrote her cookbook \u201cas a salaam to my grandmothers and great-grandmothers before me\u201d but most of all for her mother, she says. Her mother was a deeply traditional woman, who \u201cnever told me she loved me, she never told me she thought I was anything special, but she would feed me and watch me eat, and now I understand that kind of love.\u201d When she got in trouble unfairly at school, or when her brother lost a football match, their mother would go to the kitchen and make a biryani \u2014 \u201c\u2018and that was her way of telling us it was okay.\u201d Khan describes the moment that she presented a copy of the cookbook to her mother, where something completely unexpected happened: \u201cShe took this book and she bowed. Now, as Muslims, we\u2019re taught you don\u2019t bow to anyone \u2014 the idea is that you only bow down to Allah. But my mother bowed down to me and she said, \u2018You brought honour to this family.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul Rudd with Asma Khan during one of his visits to Darjeeling Express<\/p>\n
(Asma Khan)<\/p>\n
These days, Khan is an undeniable success: \u201cToday, you cannot ignore me.\u201d Her restaurant, Darjeeling Express, is on almost every Londoner\u2019s must-go list, with tables almost impossible to come by, and Danny DeVito is a well-known fan. A photo of Dan Levy and Paul Rudd at the restaurant went viral last year. But Khan never sits on her laurels. When Darjeeling Express is closed on Sundays, she offers free use of the premises to aspiring female chefs. And she\u2019s keen to underline that success didn\u2019t come overnight: \u201cI have lost more times than you can even imagine. But none of you saw me when I failed \u2014 the door closed behind me\u201d.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, Khan considers she is \u201cthere to remind you: Do not other people who look different to you.\u201d She leaves the room in Santa Fe with a final thought: In whatever area of your life you succeed in, \u201crecognise your privilege and then reach out to those who are as yet unable to be what you are.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Independent, as the event\u2019s international media partner, with coverage across each day of the festival from exclusive interviews with some of the headline authors. For more on the festival visit our Santa Fe Literary Festival section or visit the festival\u2019s website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Asma Khan almost didn\u2019t make it to her talk at the Santa Fe Literary Festival. The decorated chef and cookbook author set up a caf\u00e9 in a Yazidi refugee camp in Iraq in 2019, offering training to girls who had been sold into slavery by Isis. It was an audacious thing to attempt, unusual for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n