The Lines We Cross

Kabul Kitchen, the restaurant Mina’s family opens in their new neighborhood in Sydney, symbolizes the relationship between refugees and mainstream Australian culture. The building starts as Joe’s shop, a community staple for 20 years that served up traditional Australian fare like chiko rolls and fish and chips. Its previous history makes it an immediate target for racism and xenophobia when Mina’s family takes it over and begins serving Afghani cuisine, setting up the tension between immigrants and mainstream Australian culture in the novel. Abdel-Fattah includes the interior decorator who transforms the fish and chips shop into Kabul Kitchen with decor that is “part ethnic fetishism, part kitsch” claiming that “[p]eople want it to feel authentic,” suggesting that immigrants have to fall into comfortably familiar stereotypes for conservative white Australians to tolerate them (73).

As the dramatic tension in the novel escalates, Abdel-Fattah positions the restaurant as a battleground between two warring perspectives on the world. Alan and the Aussie Values members claim that Muslim immigrants have created “a clash of civilizations” in Australia, however, Abdel-Fattah’s story interrogates the ways in which this narrative is created and perpetuated by xenophobic ideology (81).