She is a Palestinian and a Memphian.

The Palestinian in her can’t stop thinking about the war in Gaza, about extended family members already lost, about the bad news that could arrive with the next ping on her cell phone.

The Memphian is a wife, a mother and the owner of 17 Berkshire, a bakery in Overton Square so named because growing up here, the family once lived at 4117 Berkshire in Nutbush.

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Those two identities define Nuha Abuduhair, and it is impossible to separate one from another. She is here, but so much that she loves is there.

She can do nothing about what’s happening in Gaza, but she can think of nothing else.

“It has affected her acutely,” says Lisa Toro, owner of City & State coffee shop on Broad Avenue, and something of an entrepreneurial mentor to Nuha.

Baking was always an outlet

When Nuha (pronounced Nuh-ha) was 11, the family moved from Memphis to Germantown where she graduated from Houston High School. She went through nursing school at the University of Memphis and worked at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital for three years.

All along that path, she was baking, cooking up her future without even knowing it.

“Part of our culture is a lot of gathering,” Nuha, 34, says. “So whenever we would gather, there’s always food and dessert. And so, we would always bake together whether it was for birthdays or a Friday potluck dinner.

“So I grew up doing it, and I always loved it. It was kind of my stress reliever.”

Initially, there was no reason to believe she would one day own a patisserie.

“I’d bake things upside down and incorrectly,” she says, “but it was what I turned to when I needed an outlet.”

As it is today.

“She’s tremendously talented,” Toro says. “I would go on record as saying she makes the best macarons anywhere in the world.”

‘We should speak up’

Recently, Nuha sat down for a conversation at her new 17 Berkshire pop-up storefront at Germantown’s Shops of Saddle Creek. She brewed her visitor a cup of strong yet smooth coffee and apologized that the shop wasn’t quite ready for company. The bakery opened just this past week.

She also wasn’t 100% sure about having this conversation for an article, just as she had wondered if making a passionate Instagram post about the Israel-Hamas war and the mounting civilian casualties in Gaza was the best idea for her business.

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That post begins with some of her personal history, including when her mother in 2000 nearly moved Nuha and her two sisters to Gaza. The move never happened because of violence in Gaza, and later in Nuha’s social media post she does not mince words about the current war or her view of the historical context.

“This is how I feed my family … so putting that on my Instagram page was like … I waited, and I waited, and I waited,” she says. “That weighed very heavily on me. But I think we should speak up. Like, I’m from the city that’s being bombarded.”

Her father was born in Gaza, which means it is considered her homeland even as she is an American citizen because she was born here.

She has a foot in each world, but in one place, the ground is ever shifting.

“It didn’t start on Oct. 7,” she says of the latest conflict. “For Palestinians, this is an everyday war. This has been happening for so long. We have a lot of frustration that no one has looked at us and felt the pain that we have felt.”

Although her posts brought some negative reactions, she says there was more support, which has been her experience since 2018 when she opened her business in Overton Square.

“Healthy skepticism is always there,” she says of how Americans view Muslims. “Like, I can see when my aunts visit and they wear the hijab, you can see people kind of glance over their shoulder.

“But I will say this, and I will say it until I’m blue in the face: I have always been supported in this city, and I choose to focus on that instead of the lack of support.”

Starting a life in Memphis

Toro, for her part, believes many Memphians want to know more about local entrepreneurs and not less.

“They want to know the people behind these small businesses,” she says. “Some customers may step away. But also, she will draw those that align with her beliefs, and there will be community.”

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Nuha’s father had come to America in the 1970s, studying at Mississippi State University and then making a life in Memphis. He was an entrepreneur, too, owning a store off Jackson Avenue that carried everything from dresses to rugs to car stereo systems.

Her father died when she was 10, following a severe car accident and subsequent Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis.

“All of my photos, all of the home videos, were sent to Gaza” in anticipation of the move that didn’t happen, Nuha says. “So I can’t even turn to those and go, ‘I remember this day.’

“I do remember he would play with us and tell stories before bed and let me play with his hair. He was very fun. I remember wrestling. We would watch it on TV. (Jerry) Lawler, we were very proud that he was from Memphis. We were huge fans.

“We’d watch ‘The Simpsons’ and grill. Me and my sisters would go and spend a day at work with him. He was definitely a hands-on Dad.”

‘Stress, trauma, anxiety’

Nuha’s father still has sisters in Gaza. They are the closest blood connection that Nuha has, and she can’t reach them or help them.

“I’m promoting the holidays, which is one of my favorite times to bake, and my heart just isn’t in it,” she says. “I know my family (in Gaza) doesn’t have access to water or food, and here I am promoting cakes and cupcakes. It’s part of my job, and I want people here to celebrate and have happiness …”

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But she feels guilty.

“Just seeing my husband (Alaa Abuduhair, who was born in Nablus in the West Bank) on the floor playing with my kids or me being able to sit and read a book or whatever it may be,” she says. “There is guilt.

“My aunts are there and suffering. There is a lot of guilt.”

Not to mention the angst of never knowing what is happening in Gaza from moment to moment.

Shaykh Anwar Arafat of the Islamic Association of Greater Memphis says what Nuha is experiencing is being felt by many here.

Memphis March for Palestine

“That’s everybody, almost anyone I know that has any connection,” he says. “We’ve been in collective stress, trauma, anxiety, all baked into one. We all have family there.

“Every time I check my phone, I’m afraid there’ll be bad news. We’ve had relatives, cousins, get killed.

“We still have a house there, and we’re always checking to see if has been bombed,” he adds. “It’s across the street from a hospital complex, and parts of it have been hit.”

Memphis is home

When her father was still alive, Nuha says, the family would visit his college roommate in Louisiana. She recalls it as a time when peace was almost taken for granted.

“I have very dear memories of being with Americans and being with Christians growing up,” she says. “We were never taught this divide. And it did not happen between religions until 9/11 in this country where I suddenly felt I no longer belonged.”

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Not long after her father died, she started attending Houston Middle School. It was just weeks after 9/11. The worst of what she recalls classmates saying echoes even now:

“My family would disown me if they knew I was your friend.”

“Do you have a bomb under your clothes?”

She got through it, and she expects her three children will make their way, too, although she says, “My daughter was wearing a soccer jersey that happened to have a Palestinian flag on it, and a classmate said something to her.”

While she never moved to Gaza, Nuha says that she and her husband took their children to the Middle East last summer. They went to restaurants and cafes and and saw the family and friends that they could. They were not allowed into Gaza. Nuha says if things were different, she might want to live there one day.

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“Palestine is beautiful,” she says. “We’ve got beaches and orchards, and you spend Fridays with family cooking. And beautiful life happening.”

For now, however, living there is just about impossible and living anywhere but Memphis is impractical.

“This is my home,” Nuha says. “I was born and raised here. I’ve lived nowhere else. I can’t just pick up and move my customer base. My husband is a sub-contractor. We’re both self-employed. I’m here.”

Staying strong

The Associated Press, in an attempt to provide guidance to media organizations covering the current war, offered this in a call for balance:

“In some ways, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the world’s most intractable problem.”

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Raised, once again, to a heightened level of tension.

Yet, Nuha pushes on. Giving each day her best.

“It’s impressive,” Arafat says. “They’re a hardworking family, she and her husband.”

Says Toro: “Even with all that’s going on, she’s doing the pop-ups in Germantown and growing her business in the city. It just shows her strength and entrepreneurial spirit.”

Not that any of it is easy.

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“I was telling my husband this: I don’t feel like we’ve been able to exhale fully in the past month,” Nuha says. “Because it’s an immense amount of grief. It’s an immense amount of guilt.

“And it brings up a lot of memories, and now that I’m on the other side of it and raising my kids, it brings up a lot of fear. I’m responsible for my kids, I’m responsible for my employees, for my business and the money that it makes.

“It’s a lot of pressure. I’m the leader and I have to smile and motivate,” she says. “And it’s really hard to do that right now.

“A lot of times, it’s just about, ‘Let’s get through today.’”

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