Make it a date Syrian couple’s delectable dainties offer a taste of the sweeter side of their war-ravaged homeland By: David Sanderson Posted: 2:00 AM CST Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025

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This article was published 18/01/2025 (434 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nutritious dates plucked from palm trees are considered a holy fruit in the Middle East, where they are regularly given to friends and strangers alike as a symbol of generosity.

Noura Hamwi, the Syrian-born founder of Tamara Dates, a family-run venture specializing in gourmet, chocolate-covered dates stuffed with nuts, was raised in that tradition.

Little surprise, when Hamwi was a vendor at a pop-up market two years ago, she unhesitatingly gifted a box of dates to an invited guest who looked familiar, but whose face she couldn’t quite place.

A few weeks later, the married mother of three received a letter in the mail that began, “I wanted to take a moment to express my deepest gratitude for the wonderful dates you shared with me. Your gesture was incredibly thoughtful and was much appreciated.”

The missive went on to describe Hamwi as a “true testament to the remarkable talent that exists within our city,” and stated that Tamara Dates was undoubtedly having a “positive impact on our local economy.”

“It was signed by the mayor (Scott Gillingham),” Hamwi says, holding out the officially-stamped document, which she keeps in a protective folder.

“I was so surprised and proud, I didn’t know what to say.”

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Hamwi was born and raised in Homs, a city of 775,000 in western Syria, approximately 150 kilometres north of Damascus. In 2007 she was introduced to Anas Albouchi, who was also from Homs, but who had moved with his parents to Dubai 27 years earlier to escape political oppression brought on by Syria’s then-president, Hafez Assad.

They married within a few months. In 2010, once Hamwi had completed her degree in Arabic language and literature at Homs’ Al-Baath University, she and their two-year-old son joined Albouchi in Dubai, where he was working as a public relations officer.

“I remember they came in November (2010) and a few months later, in March (2011), the (civil) war started, so we were very lucky she got out of Syria when she did,” says Albouchi, referring to the conflict sparked by discontent with Bashar Assad, who assumed the presidency following the death of his father in 2000. (A week before we sat down with the couple, Assad fled Syria for Moscow ahead of the collapse of his regime, a turn of events both see as good news.)

Their life in Dubai, where they welcomed two more children, was comfortable. But as the war back home raged on and millions of Syrians began fleeing to neighbouring nations, public sentiment began to turn. By 2015, they were hearing comments along the lines of “get out” and “go back to your own country.”

“Soon, the government started kicking people out without notice, except the only country you could get an entry visa for back then was Sudan,” Albouchi continues. They decided it would be in their best interest to apply for refugee status to Canada. In November 2017, they received a call from the Canadian embassy in Abu Dhabi, informing them their application had been approved.

The family settled in Winnipeg, the city chosen for them by Canadian officials, in April 2018. There was still a fair amount of snow on the ground, Hamwi recalls, at least enough to get their kids excited about the wintry wonderland they had investigated on the internet before leaving the Middle East.

Albouchi landed a job in the RBC Convention Centre’s set-up department. Hamwi, who couldn’t speak a lick of English when they moved here, caught on as an announcer with a local radio station, Arab Manitoba Radio. She spent nine months there before accepting a part-time position at Université de Saint-Boniface, where she worked with fellow refugees, interviewing them about the challenges they faced in their new surroundings.

“Then the pandemic happened and like everybody else, I was stuck at home,” she says.

In May 2020, Hamwi learned one of her friends was feeling under the weather. In Syria, chocolate-covered dates are commonly dropped off as a pick-me-up, only when she tried to find something similar in Winnipeg, she came up empty-handed. Undaunted, she decided to make her own, with the assistance of online tutorials.

Her friend enjoyed the treats so much she demanded to know where Hamwi purchased them, in the event she was ever stuck for a present. Hamwi revealed the dates were her creation, to which her pal announced, if that was the case she should be doing it for a living.

“I thought maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea and since I wasn’t doing anything else, I spent the next few months improving my skills, and figuring out what type of dates go best with what,” she says, mentioning soft dates work well with smaller nuts like pistachios and cashews, while firmer dates are ideal for larger nuts or dark chocolate.

“Meanwhile, Anas helped me get everything I needed, like my business licence and food-handler’s certificate, so when we created a website in November (2020), we were good to go.”

Initially, Tamara Dates, so-named because tamara is the Arabic word for palm tree, was especially popular with Winnipeg’s Muslim community, particularly during Ramadan when it is customary to break daily fasting by consuming dates.

Except once Hamwi began showing off her luxuriously packaged products at pop-up markets in and around the city, word spread and orders began pouring in from sweet tooths of all backgrounds. (How’s this for a ringing endorsement of Hamwi’s artistic abilities? One customer told her his grandmother had been keeping a box of her dates in the fridge for over a year, because she felt they were too beautiful to eat.)

Hamwi and Albouchi, who left his job at the convention centre to function as Tamara Dates’ full-time operations manager, are currently operating out of a commercial kitchen in Windsor Park. Every last date is made fresh, which sometimes results in long hours.

There have definitely been occasions when he or Noura have stayed there overnight, Albouchi says, finalizing orders for private companies as far away as B.C. and Texas that have requested dozens of boxes of dates for employees ahead of major holidays. They’ve also shipped their products to soon-to-be-married couples, packaging individual dates in palm tree-shaped gift boxes to divvy out as wedding favours.

“It’s all done by hand, you won’t find any machines here, so it can be hard work, but we enjoy it immensely,” he adds, mentioning a majority of the dates they use are imported from the Middle East, and that they go with Belgian-made Callebaut chocolate exclusively.

As for future goals, Hamwi says they would love to open a “sweet shop” of their own one day. In the interim, they have entered into preliminary discussions with a national supermarket chain interested in carrying their goods on its shelves. Next month they will attend a pair of Ramadan expos, first in Laval, Que. (Feb. 8-9), then in Mississauga, Ont. (Feb. 15-17).

Finally, Hamwi, who has paid it forward by hiring Ukrainian refugees during peak periods, can’t say enough good things about their adopted homeland.

“Canada and this city have given us something our family could not find in the Middle East: a sense of belonging.

“Last year I travelled to Saudi Arabia to see my mother for the first time in eight years. I was there for 25 days and by the end of the first week, I was already missing Winnipeg. Coming here was the best thing we could have ever done for our children.”

For more information, go to tamaradates.ca

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca