The Islamic-Uighur-Chinese-Albanian Pizza Tosser
Abu Bakr Qassim, the pizza chef of Tirana, Albania
How’s this for a fascinating story. Abu Bakr Qassim, whose story is detailed in this fascinating profile from the German media outlet Siegel Online, is a Uighur whose life has taken him from China to Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay to Tirana, Albania.
Uighurs are an ethnic group in remote western China who practice Islam. Abu Bakr Qassim found himself in Tora Bora, Afgahanistan, then got rounded up by American forces and sent to Guantanamo, where he wallowed for four years before a ruling found him not to be an enemy combatant (he apparently wanted to fight the Chinese gov’t, not ours). If sent back to China he would have faced persecution, so he sought asylum elsewhere and landed in Albania, one of America’s allies in the Iraq War. Other Uighurs have ended up in Bermuda and most recently, Palau. Must be nice!
Qassim needed a skill and a way to earn a living, so he learned how to make pizzas in Albania, where he is dutifully learning Albanian and trying to open up the Islamic-Albanian version of Homeslice. Damn, what a life.
