Local opinion: Shukran from the Jewish community

When the owners of Al Basha Grocery, a Muslim-owned market specializing in Middle Eastern products, announced that it would be closing its store on Tucson’s Grant Road, members of the Jewish community felt the loss immediately.

“So sorry to hear this, we will really miss you,” Ann wrote in the Facebook group Kosher in Tucson. Simon commented, “Another loss for the community.” Aaron added, “Thanks for your service; may you prosper in your next venture.”

Local Jews took the closure personally, in large part because the grocery maintained a dedicated aisle for kosher goods that are often difficult to find in a city like Tucson.

For one regular, a Friday shopping loop in preparation for Shabbat included a stop at Al Basha to get Brooklyn cookies and Israeli pickles. For another, it was the place to find tea, kosher deli meats, or a conversation that would not have happened elsewhere. The store created points of overlap in a city where communities often run on parallel tracks.

From the outset, its owners, Ghufran Almusawi and her husband Anas Elazrag, envisioned it as a kind of meeting ground. Offering both halal and kosher foods was a deliberate way to draw different communities into the same space. Customers recall conversations that began with questions about ingredients and turned into exchanges about practice, identity, and daily life. At times, shoppers would step in to answer one another, creating small, unscripted moments of connection.

That dynamic was not always simple. During outbreaks of violence between Israel and Hamas, Almusawi faced customers challenging her decision to continue carrying kosher products, questioning how she could do so at that time. The pushback came from both directions. Some Muslims were uncomfortable with the store’s outreach to Jews, and some Jews hesitated because the store was Muslim-owned.

Looking back, Elazrag admits it was a difficult path to walk. “It was hard to create an experience like this for both communities,” he reflected, “but I learned that peace is best.”

Still, Elazrag and Almusawi kept their focus on those who showed up in the spirit they intended. “What both religions teach is peace,” Almusawi said. “We’re welcoming of everybody. We don’t want to make anybody feel uncomfortable and anybody is welcome to shop. And if any items are missing that they are looking for, we’re always willing to bring it in.”

What ultimately brought that to an end was not a geopolitical crisis or a breakdown in relations. It was the ongoing construction on Grant Road. Months of limited access and reduced foot traffic made it difficult for the business to sustain itself, Elazrag told me. Even as the doors close, he remains focused on the original mission: “We tried our best to make peace, at least in our small community.”

As sad as the closure is, there is something sobering here. We tend to think that large forces shape the life of a community. Sometimes they do. But just as often, it is the smaller, more mundane disruptions that determine whether spaces of connection can endure. A construction project reroutes traffic, and with it, the steady flow of human encounters that quietly build understanding.

A road is designed to get us from one point to another, but a community is built in the stops we make along the way. Al Basha was one of those essential stops. For that, the Jewish community offers a heartfelt shukran (thank you) to Almusawi and Elazrag for the service and the common ground they provided.