Terror raids: Sydney’s original Lebanese community shocked

Like Lebanon itself before the civil war, the Lebanese community in Sydney’s Surry Hills was harmonious.

Elie Melhem says the Surry Hills Lebanese community was stunned by Saturday’s raids. Picture: Britta Campion

For more than half a century, the men of the Lebanese community around Sydney’s inner-city Surry Hills have met at one hole-in-the-wall venue or another to drink coffee­, talk about the old country, and play a version of the card game rummy.

Like Lebanon itself before the civil war of 1975-90 the Lebanese community in Surry Hills and surrounds was quite harmonious; Christian, Sunni Muslim and Shia Muslim men all gathered around the card table.

By all accounts it still is. Elie Melhem, a Maronite Christian who migrated to Australia from Lebanon in 1967, aged 21, is one of the card players who hangs out in a small rented shopfront off Cleveland Street where the men gather.

Mr Melhem told The Australian yesterday he knew the patriarch of the family that lives on Cleveland Street a couple of blocks from the card den, whose terrace house was raided by police on Saturday as part of a sweep on an alleged terror plot to bring down an airliner.

“We both come from Tripoli,” Mr Melhem said, referring to the city in northern Lebanon.

The patriarch was Sunni Muslim­, Mr Melhem said, and was in poor health and understood to be in hospital at the time of the raids.

“We’d play cards here, or sometimes we’d all go and have a drink,” Mr Melhem said, adding that sectar­ianism, religious conflict and radicalisation never entered their minds.

He said that was why the Surry Hills Lebanese community was stunned to learn that the hordes of police who blocked off Cleveland Street on Saturday were acting against an alleged Islamic terror plot. Yesterday afternoon two police officers were on guard outside the front of the raided house, while forensic officers were still ­examining items from the premises, in a lane at the back sealed off by riot squad vehicles.

While Sydney’s big Lebanese-Australia­n communities are now in the outer west and southwest, many of whom came fleeing the civil war — that in Surry Hills, on the fridges of the central business district — formed the first nucleus­ back in the 1950s and 60s.

In those days, Surry Hills was a working-class suburb, and while its northern edges have been yuppified­, the southern end around Cleveland Street maintains a vestige of the old feel.

There’s an Orthodox Christian church, a Maronite church, and a mosque not too far from each other, although the mosque — two doors down from the house that was raided — is understood to be mainly congregated by Muslims of Turkish, Pakistani and Indian ­descent, rather than Lebanese. There’s a string of Lebanese rest­aurants on Cleveland Street just down from the raided premises — well-known establishments including Emad’s, Fatima’s, The Prophet, Abdul’s, and Nada’s, some run by Christians and some by Muslims, with a certain amount of interaction.

“You’ve got mixed religions, this was the area they settled in,” said Mark Syriani, whose Orthodox Christian family runs Nada’s, adding that one of his staff was Muslim.

When Mr Syriani arrived at the restaurant for work at 5pm on Saturday, his section of Cleveland Street had been closed off by police for some hours.

“I actually thought it was a practice run, I didn’t think it was the real thing,” Mr Syriani said.

The real thing was pretty dramatic. Police took one man from the premises shrouded under a bedsheet — he was treated for head injuries.

He reportedly said, when asked why he’d been arrested, “no idea”, before adding, “they bashed me”.

One woman had her wrists cable-tied, while another woman was escorted from the scene by police with her head covered by a leopard-skin print.

Mr Syriani said that most of his customers came from outside Surry Hills these days, including from the well-off north shore.

He had received several cancellations on Saturday night, and only a few customers braved Cleveland Street during the aftermath of the raid.

“It was not your average ­Saturday night, that’s for sure,” Mr Syriani said.