As soon as the opportunity arose, Amer Alqadi took the subway. He counted 27 stops on Line 7 before getting off at Hermannplatz, in the south of Berlin. He had been advised to go to Neukölln, a working-class neighborhood in the German capital. With another Syrian, he walked along the main thoroughfare, Sonnenallee. Tired of the same bread and cheese handed out every day near the asylum seekers' reception center set up in an old military barracks, they wanted to "eat Arab" or "Mediterranean." Having arrived in Berlin just a few days earlier, Alqadi had found a place in a tent, shared with seven other men. But on that particular day, he was dreaming "of shawarma and falafel," a nostalgic pleasure.

Back in 2015, there were "10 or 15 Arab shops in the area, no more," recalled the 39-year-old. Ten years later, Middle Eastern shops abound, stretching for hundreds of meters on each side of the avenue. Today, Sonnenallee is even nicknamed "the Arab street."

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