There are many places to get a coffee as you stroll around Saint-Gilles, a bustling area of southern Brussels renowned for its Art Nouveau architecture and laid-back, artistic vibe. However, there is only one coffee shop with a canine name.
Bassel Abou Fakher, a Syrian singer, owns Stella, a friendly White Shepherd who welcomes clients at the front door and whose image serves as the store’s logo. Bassel has flourished in Belgium for the past seven years after leaving Syria’s civil war. He has released four solo music albums and most recently opened Stella coffee shop with his pals.
The specialized coffee shop has been praised for its star attraction in addition to its kind service and top-notch coffee. One of the numerous positive online reviews stated, “Come for Stella, stay for the coffee.”
“Stella is my dog, but she’s also my best friend,” Bassel says of his canine friend, who also happens to be the main character in a children’s book.
Bassel is now 25 years old and has succeeded in creating a new life as an entrepreneur, co-owner of a café, and musician. However, a significant aspect of his life—Stella—was absent when he initially came.
When Bassel was a young boy of 12 years old and living in Damascus, she initially entered his life as a tiny white pup.
Stella was only 40 days old, and they cuddled each other at night as they fell asleep.
But a fight came out a year later, and Stella shook at the sound of bombs going off. Bassel continued to take her for walks even though his parents were too scared to leave the house, not even to get food.
Bassel ran away from his house and the bloodshed in Damascus in 2015 in search of safety in Belgium. His father stayed behind to take care of Bassel’s grandmother, while his mother and sister also fled and ultimately found sanctuary in Ireland and Germany.
Fleeing war, Bassel says, means “losing identity and not knowing who you are anymore.’’ He describes his journey – involving smugglers, long walks across unfamiliar terrain, and several train trips – in the most laconic terms: “everything was difficult.”
He was adopted by a kind-hearted Belgian family a few months after arriving in Brussels, and in his 18 months spent with them, they assisted him in adjusting to Belgian culture and feeling at home.
“For me, the most important thing that made me feel safe was creating that circle of trust between people, a circle of friends and people that supported me, and I supported them back,” Bassel says.
Because Bassel missed Stella, his hosts Joannes Vandermeulen and Ann Hoste came up with a scheme to smuggle the dog out of Syria. Stella managed to travel from Damascus to Beirut with the aid of a courageous cab driver. Joannes met her at the airport, checked her documents, and convinced her to travel in the cargo hold of an airliner to Brussels.
“It was extremely difficult to imagine what it would take to bring a dog from Beirut through Istanbul to Brussels. It was very complex,” Joannes explains. “[Stella] almost died on the way [when she got] stuck with her collar in the cage. In the end, I was so tired and I was so emotional.”
Despite the difficulties, Joannes was committed to completing the objective.
“Helping people motivates you. It’s what makes the human species so successful – that we love to help each other most of the time.”
Stella required some time to adjust to her new life after experiencing so much stress. Bassel, though, thought his life was now whole again. Their tale was retold by well-known author Deborah Blumenthal, whose young-adult novel “Saving Stella: A Dog’s Dramatic Escape from War” is graced with endearing pictures by Syrian artist Nadine Kaadan, who now resides in London. The prestigious Kirkus Reviews applauded the book as “an unusual refugee story that may open doors for empathy.”
Bassel, who had played the cello in Syria since he was seven years old and was surrounded by artists, rediscovers his passion for music. He has created four solo albums under the alias Linear Minds, working as a sound designer on five composer collaborations. Electronica and dance music are combined in his work, which he describes as having dark melodies and strong bass lines.
“People always say I’m super driven, always working,” he laughs. “Never stop. In French, they call me ‘la machine. I think when you’re passionate about something, you wake up happy to do it.” With two friends, he opened the corner coffee shop – “a place where we constantly meet new people, talking to them, getting to know their lives a little bit.” He wanted to enfold locals and newcomers in the warm embrace Belgium had extended to him. “We created this neighborhood feel, where the people who come, they come to see us. They come to talk to us. We love to get to interact and get to know them. It’s a community.”
A community headed by a big fluffy White Shepherd called Stella.
