A corner of Bed-Stuy is attracting African immigrants during Ramadan

Immigrants to Bed-Stuy are mostly from Sudan and West Africa, and have energized the neighborhood’s Muslim community. They draw young crowds to their mosques and businesses, but they are in desperate need of assistance and basic services, including food, long-term housing, and work authorization.

Their arrival has made places like Fulton Street community hubs, as well as a clear example of the forces changing New York City in ways both large and small.

Hassan Mohammed, 61, a Sudanese businessman who helps pay for the daily iftar held in his backyard, came to the US in 1987. He has lived in Bed-Stuy for about 20 years, and he said he had five friends who died in the neighborhood in the 1980s and ’90s.

“I came here when Bed-Stuy was a very segregated neighborhood. At that time it was very dangerous and you couldn’t walk outside,” he said. “It has become a modern neighborhood now. You see a lot of different types of people.”

At one end of Mr. Mohammed’s block, a new Shake Shake is located across the street from the Mosque at-Taqwa, a mosque that seceded from the Nation of Islam in 1981. At the other end, a condo tower, its windows studded with monstrosities and other fashionable houseplants, looms over the backyard where expatriates break the Ramadan fast.

In between the fitness clubs and cafes selling oat milk lattes are an array of immigrant-owned businesses, including Mr. Mohammed’s business. Their shop is the kind of jack-of-all-trades emporium found in many immigrant neighborhoods: tax preparation, translation services, computer repair and Internet access, including complimentary life advice from the generation of immigrants who came before you. Is given.

“It is still an African neighborhood, but now it is also a white neighborhood,” said Galal Ali El Tayeb, 61, Mr. Mohammed’s business partner and college friend from Khartoum University.

“But the Africans are holding on,” he said, smiling. “We are staying here. And now with the new immigrants, it has become unbelievable.”

More than 180,000 migrants have arrived in New York over the past two years and about 65,000 of them live in shelters, city officials have said. The city has struggled to provide food and housing for all of them, and earlier this month it announced a new policy limiting adult migrants to only 30 days in city shelters.

That surge of immigration has made Fulton Street busier than ever. A halal restaurant owned by Mr. Mohammed is doing brisk business selling traditional African American specialties, West Indian dishes, and dishes from the Middle East and Africa. During Ramadan it also often hosts iftar in the mosque down the street, where about 300 people eat a free meal at sunset.

The migration has turned Mr Mohammed’s backyard into a famous hangout spot where men drink tea and smoke hookah while they think about the past or plan for the future. But during Ramzan, all this comes to an end before the hustle and bustle of fasting duties and Iftar preparations.

Lotfi Ibrahim, 31, came to the shop to warm up on a recent morning after spending the night in the subway. He had to leave the shelter a day early because he had crossed the 30-day limit. By late afternoon, he had joined the iftar effort and was sitting stirring stew on the propane stove.

“I will sleep on the train again tonight,” said Mr. Ibrahim, who came to the United States from Sudan in December. “It’s scary. The police come and tell me to leave, so I go. And then I come back and sleep again.

Mr. Ibrahim sat down with more than half a dozen other young men and prepared a big pot of chickpeas, lentils, chicken stew, fresh bread and asida, a Sudanese food made primarily of flour and water.

As one man stirred the pot of asida with a large wooden spoon, three others held it in place. Fathi Rahman Abdullah, 34, who came to New York from Darfur, Sudan, in November, turned to the men and laughed.

“At home, a woman will cook all this food,” said Mr Abdullah, who was appointed head of the iftar kitchen by Mr Mohammed. “But there are six of us needed here!”

Providing free iftar to the poor is common in Muslim communities, and the practice of zakat, or charitable giving, is one of the foundations of Islam. Mr Mohammed, Mr El Tayeb and others in the block said they had started feeding migrants long before Ramadan began and would continue to do so after it ended on April 9.

“People come here in the morning and we give them breakfast – eggs, beans, bread, whatever we have,” Mr. El Tayeb said. “We put ourselves in their shoes.”

The task of feeding so many hungry migrants is part of a larger need imposed on the city by the influx of so many people in such a short period of time, and what the city government and some local leaders have called an inadequate response. Federal officials and civil society.

“New York City is doing what it can, but it can’t do everything,” Mr. Mohammed said. “The federal government needs to do more, big corporations need to do more, ordinary people – everyone needs to do something.”

As sunset approached, a queue of young men started forming at Mr Mohammed’s shop and on the footpath outside. He stood near the office coffee pot and watched them gather. Some people looked barely older than their teens.

They reminded Mr. Mohammed of his grandchildren, he said. When he came to this country he reminded them of himself.

But, while Bed-Stuy may have been a tough place to be at the time, the idea of ​​making a life for yourself in America seemed, somehow, less daunting.

“It is not right that people are sleeping outside in New York,” Mr Mohammed said, shortly before the call to prayer signaled the end of the fast. They jumped into plates of food placed on a folding table in his concrete backyard. “This is a rich country.”