I worked as the sole waitress in a small Syrian restaurant in my hometown one summer during college. Mazen, an immigrant from Damascus, owned the place and wore many other hats: chef, busboy, bookkeeper and host. Meanwhile, I took orders and ran steaming platters of kebabs and saffron rice to the tables. But there was barely enough work for two people to do in the restaurant that summer.

On cooler days I’d sit at one of the tables outside, reading a novel while I waited for customers. Mazen would come out with iced tea and baklava for me and share stories about Syria. His father had owned the largest restaurant in Damascus, he told me, and had been wealthy. Now Mazen’s wife and sons cramped into a small basement apartment in the former factory town nearby, while I lived a life of leafy-green suburban ease.

All summer I could tell Mazen was stressed about money. A glitzy Turkish restaurant had opened a few blocks away. Mazen often complained about the noise coming from the restaurant on belly dancer nights. But by August, Mazen was offering $5 falafel lunch specials and dusting off the decorative hookah pipes from the window display in an effort to lure in younger clientele.

We spent so much time alone together that I worried it would cause conflict; he was a Syrian Arab after all, and I was an American Jew. Our people didn’t always get along. But I quickly learned Mazen hated politics. He was far more interested in reality TV than he was in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. On the hottest days, we idled away the time indoors, flipping from Animal Planet to Comedy Central, laughing at low-brow prank shows.

On slow days like that when there were no customers, he’d sometimes slip me $75 around 8 p.m. and tell me to enjoy the rest of my night. I’d wander off to some house party or to smoke cigarettes with high school friends behind the Dunkin’ Donuts.

I went back to college that fall. When I stopped by the restaurant over Christmas break, hoping to pick up a shawarma to go, I saw the FOR LEASE sign, the empty walls stripped of the satin tapestries and bells that had spun when the door opened in a brief wisp of summer breeze.