Rubi wanted two things for his 13th birthday: a bicycle, and to see his dad, Ahmed, again. It was the end of November, and it had been three months since his family was whole, since Ahmed left for Germany with Rashed and other colleagues from Salloura. Rubi’s days in Istanbul were a steady grind, all blending together in a dim purgatory: wake up at 6 in the morning, get to work at the shirt factory two bus rides away by 7, iron, sew, take the boss’s orders, go home 12 hours later, eat, sleep, repeat. Before Ahmed left, he had been working at the Salloura factory, learning his father’s trade.

“It is betrayal,” As’ad Salloura declared from behind his giant wooden desk at the Salloura factory, tucked away on the outskirts of Istanbul. From here, he runs the transplanted 150-year-old sweets empire that is his family’s namesake. It had been three months since he’d last seen Ahmed, his most cherished employee, Rashed, another integral part of the staff, and two others. “No one told me they were leaving…I found out by chance maybe four or five hours before they left [for Europe],” he said, his thick dimpled fingers thumping the table as he spoke between sips of cigarettes and mate, an herbal caffeinated tea popular in Syria.

Anyone with observant eyes and a rumbling stomach will notice how newcomers to the city – and their snack foods – are cropping up like the pink beijo-turco flowers that grow in Rio’s forests after a heavy rain. There’s Hasan with his eggplant esfiha pastries amongst the popcorn vendors and candle-lighters at the Nossa Senhora da Glória church of Largo do Machado; energetic and trendy Armin with his falafel in Botafogo; tired Hafez with his boxes of savory snacks, trying to find shade on the Rua das Laranjeiras. Brazilians didn’t need to be told to like Arab food, and now they’re getting a fresh wave of that culture’s already iconic snacks. The bready esfihas and bulgur wheat kibe may be to Brazilians what chicken tikka masala is to Brits, a formerly foreign food now amongst the country’s most ubiquitous for drunk munchers and rushed lunch-breakers alike. Arab migration dates back over a century in Latin America, and Brazil’s Lebanese diaspora is the largest in the world, with a population as high as 10 million. Some 10 percent of Brazil’s congress is of Arab ancestry.

It was a hot, humid June in Istanbul. A deadline hovered over Ahmed. He gave himself three months to make the biggest decision of his life: Would he stay? Or would he go? The reasons to leave Istanbul far outnumbered the ones to stay. He was working day and night for a salary that barely made ends meet. The long hours weren’t new – his life in Aleppo was work, 15 hours a day, seven days a week. But unlike in Turkey, Ahmed made more than enough in Syria: he bought a brand new house for his family just before the war; his wife, Laila, was a respected housewife, pushing her kids to study; his two older kids, Rubi and Ruseel – little Rivana wasn’t even born yet – went to good schools. Rubi even had a private English tutor.

Tucked away in an alley in Istanbul’s Aksaray neighborhood, Şirket Alahdab is a small grocery store overflowing with Syrian staples: pickled baby eggplants, dried leafy greens, cans of clotted cream for desserts. When we enter the store, Istanbul temporarily fades away and Damascus or Aleppo take its place. “All real,” the clerk declares proudly, as he shows off his goods. “Smuggled from Syria.”

Since Syrians took to the streets in March 2011 to demand reform, news from Syria can be boiled down to montages of people angry, bloodied and afraid; bearded young men in military fatigues dodging behind crumbled buildings; the ominous black flags of the so-called Islamic State; children pulled from the rubble of bombed out buildings; masses of people crossing borders into neighboring countries or being saved from the sea. That’s all the world knows about Syria. And while those images are real life for many Syrians, it shouldn’t define them. Food, however, does. It’s the lifeline of Syrian culture, easily defined by almost boundless generosity, as can be witnessed in the mounds of food piled high for any given guest. For Syrians, a friendship isn’t truly established until “bread and salt” are shared.

Editor’s note: While the fate of the Gezi Park occupation is being hotly discussed, we’ve been spending our time sipping deeper into Turkey’s other great debate: what is the country’s national drink? In the spirit of national reconciliation, here is our report. The recent protests that raged across Turkey may have been sparked by the government’s ham-fisted efforts to bulldoze a precious stand of trees in Istanbul’s Gezi Park, but the country’s eaters and drinkers had already gotten a taste of Ankara’s increasingly meddlesome overreach during the weeks and months before.