This Coffee Company in Georgia Is Changing Refugees' Lives—and Catering the Set of 'Stranger Things'

对于停在佐治亚州克拉克斯顿的东庞塞·德莱昂大道（East Ponce de Leon Avenue）的1960年代服务站外的鲜红色咖啡卡车的所有者来说，艾哈迈德·阿尔祖卡尼（Ahmad Alzoukani）也可能是一款直接从中央演员脱颖而出的模特咖啡师。

Trained as a pharmacist, the 32-year-old from Syria is unfailingly polite and welcomes customers toRefuge Coffee Co.—women in headdresses, soccer moms, hipsters, fellow refugees—with a beatific smile. Hislattesare sublime, and at some point Ahmad found himself having become a kind of public face for the small business. The guy peeking out from Refuge’s truck window with a cheerful grin who’s often the first thing customers throughout Atlanta interact with at parties, weddings and on the set of films and TV shows like the new season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things”—shot in Atlanta—that get catered by Refuge.

A post on Refuge’s Instagram feed captures Ahmad, with his movie star good looks, winking rakishly at the camera. When he hands you your latte or cappuccino or iced芙蓉茶,你看到一个人笑话,making small talk, asking you about your day and thanking you for helping Refuge continue its work. There's plenty, of course, that you don't see. Things that would point to why he's even here in the first place, one immigrant among thousands in this small town in Georgia just outside Atlanta, where more than 12,000 people like Ahmad are packed into what’s been called the most ethnically and culturally diverse square mile in the United States.

Refuge Coffee employs some of them, refugees from as far away as the Congo and the Middle East. A few weeks ago, the company bought the old service station property where it’s been renting space. Caleb Goodrum, Refuge’s director of operations, said the plan is to eventually build out a coffee shop inside that space and share that location with other businesses and organizations in Clarkston.

For two years now, Refuge has situated itself inside the beating heart of the town, sometimes referred to as “the Ellis Island of the South.” Founder Kitti Murray started it with a kind of perfect loop in mind. The goal is mentorship and job training for refugees, which Refuge does behind the scenes. And by employing them on the trucks—one truck stays parked, while another is constantly on the road, catering—the one thing feeds the other.

如果您可以与艾哈迈德（Ahmad）共度一天，您可能会在避难人员支持人员会议上尽职尽责地在阿拉伯语中做笔记，就像他最近一天一样。这些笔记是他想确定并询问的问题，每个人都对他作为避难所的餐饮经理的期望。注意到他学到的事实，仍然尽可能快地学习英语。

“Just to be sure,” he made a point of clarifying one day at work, “when you said I ‘killed it’ or ‘crushed it,’ that’s a good thing, right?” Yes, Ahmad. You crushed it.

当他离开大马士革和一场可怕的战争时，他几乎不知道英语，这将他的国家变成了暴力和死亡的地方。现在？现在，他已经知道了足够多的语言，几乎可以说服您，几乎是，在难民和移民的一名卡车上工作，这是他一生的一生。他毫不掩饰地悬挂着避难所。

“With Refuge, you get a chance to show yourself, who you are. It’s more than a job. I feel I’m working with my family.”

不过，当他谈论自己的生活，在南方这个小镇上成为移民时，听了一点仔细的话，这是一个陌生的土地上的众所周知的陌生人 - 您可能会发现自己对外卖者感到惊讶。或者，也许是他从未停止过。

“I’m someone who is positive, and I don’t look behind,” Ahmad continues. “Always, I look forward. I know it’s not easy to learn a new language, and it’s not easy to create a new home, a new place. I have to work hard to just be where I would like to be. So when I got here, it wasn’t easy, but I had no choice. I had to do it. I’m someone who is positive and looking forward to everything. Like, I cannot say that’s impossible. Nothing is impossible in life.”

艾哈迈德想回到学校。要获得学位，因此他可以得到证明是在美国再次成为药剂师。就目前而言，他度过了自己的日子，周围环绕着羊角面包和烤饼，蒸汽的卷须，倒牛奶，咖啡酿造。帮助避难讲一个故事。

这就是Kitti认为整个企业的重点，即故事。“告诉世界其他地方，关于难民更准确。一个更美丽的人。”她坚持认为，避难所是无议程的，唯一的信息是欢迎的，坚称这里没有政治性的地方。但也完全意识到这是2017年，某些事情发生了，改变，被打破了。这样，有时甚至像出售一杯Java这样的基本交易也可以是有力的信念陈述。

这就是避难咖啡的创始人所相信的。“我了解到的是……让人们感到宾至如归，这是每个人的需求。每个人都可以给别人。”

她大声暂停并沉思着对悲剧，恐怖主义以及如何影响移民社区的反应。这是一次对话，在最近的纽约市卡车袭击事件发生后仅几天，这是一种致命的恐怖主义行为。

“如果我们说我们有一个爱的议程,然后我们love the people who are scared, too. [People] who say hateful things. We have to figure out how to love them, too.”

It’s no coincidence she launched Refuge in Clarkston about two-and-a-half years ago, in a town where the UN resettles a few thousand refugees each year. The place is a collective of the displaced, who’ve left jobs, a lifetime’s accumulation of education and wealth, to start over. Who've fled war, oppressive regimes, to come to a place where the language, the culture, almost everything is a barrier to surmount. They bring with them unseen scars.

这里的人均收入不到20,000美元。多元文化主义在美国小镇的背景下被粉碎。“女人，”基蒂解释说，“沿着我的街头走着巨大的篮子。足球儿童从所有这些不同的国家奔跑。”来自缅甸，刚果，叙利亚。索马里人。柬埔寨人。他们坚持他们所知道的。They learn what they need, so that they get acclimated to the point where, say, Refuge’s Congolese manager has been known to instruct other employees: “I don’t know what being on time looks like in your country, but here it looks like being here 15 minutes early.”

Goodrum was in the Air Force before working at Refuge. His job entails running the trucks, making sure the staff is paid, everything is scheduled and booked and customer relationships are handled.

但是避难所也很小，他的一天可能包括与咨询公司谈论避难所的未来。否则可能需要他做拿铁咖啡。

“It’s fun to work alongside a really diverse crew,” he says. “I think diversity, in general, is something I’ve grown to value more and more as I’ve moved into my adult life. My wife is Egyptian, and I came from Asheville, North Carolina. It’s a pretty homogeneous place. It’s pretty white.

“I came into this as, like, a coffee nerd. And I still am. I’m measuring extraction percentages on the coffee and all this stuff and getting jazzed about the flavor. But I do think if you start a coffee shop, and that’s the end goal that you’re striving for - you know, you’re going to come up a little bit empty. Even if it tastes good. So I’ve been grateful to work with refugees and immigrants as like an engine to say, hey, this is why I’m going to get to the truck at 4 a.m. and start brewing coffee. This is why I do it.”

可以肯定的是，他不这样做。不，他没有什么可补充的东西（至少在记录中）来谈论墙壁和民族主义。归根结底，这是一辆咖啡卡车。停在一个小镇的一条普通街道上。您订购卡布奇诺咖啡。您感谢窗户后面的男人和女人。也许它为您的生活增加了一些东西。它肯定对柜台另一侧的人们做。对于像艾哈迈德（Ahmad）这样的人，咖啡师梦想再次成为药剂师。

不必说，尽管可以，但您可以。有时，只是存在，或者只是出售一杯好咖啡，有时这可能是所有人中最有力的政治陈述。