Feature: Historic bakery flourishes in Gaza amid blockade

Everyday, the residents of Zeitoon neighborhood in the old city of Gaza can smell the hot bread and tasty traditional meals that come out from a primitive mud-made oven of the baker Na'eem Shurab.

"Here at my bakery, I have a primitive oven and I bake for my customers local traditional breads, all kinds of pastries, cooked meals with grilled chicken and rice cooked in pottery vessels mixed with vegetable, chicken and meat," the 38-year-old man told Xinhua.

Shurab started an apprenticeship as a baker when he was a boy. He said he not only bakes bread and food, but also roasts nuts such as peanuts and coffee beans.

The time-honored bakery, where the ceiling is made of tin and the walls built from mud, stones and wood, is considered as one of the most traditional and rare structures in Gaza.

"My father and grandfather had the same job and worked at this bakery that is more than 100 years," Shurab said.

Ramzi Abu Amrah, one of Shurab's old customers, just called to order a huge meal including rice and spicy beef meat from the bakery.

"It was a great idea to order the meal from Shurab bakery, because the food is healthy, well-done and tasty," Abu Amrah told Xinhua. "I'm so proud that I ordered the meal from him because I felt like I'm reviving history and remembering how our ancestors were cooking their food."

Other customers who visit Shurab's bakery agreed that food cooked at his stove "is really healthy and has a special taste that is completely different from the taste of food from electric stoves or stoves operated by gas or fuel."

Shurab says he receives dozens of phone calls from families who wanted to try his food, adding that "many of my customers are from the neighborhood and many others who come from all over Gaza."

He also said that his bakery once saw a downturn in the last few years, which forced him to bake only large family meals. However, "due to the hard living daily situation with the severe shortage of electricity and gas, my bakery has flourished and now I decided to provide services to individuals too."

Israel has been imposing a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip of nearly 2 million people for 10 years since Islamic Hamas movement violently seized control of the coastal enclave in the summer of 2007.

Due to the blockade, the enclave has been sinking into a series of crises such as the severe shortage of electricity and fuels.

"The popular bakery is an important choice for every family in Gaza amid the severe shortage of power because we only receive electricity at most six hours a day," said Om Hazem, a 38-year-old mother of five children. Endit