If you have a question, you bang the table. Not a polite tap, but a loud bang, as it is the vibrations that get the teacher’s attention.

It feels rude at first, but it’s all part of the experience of learning to cook at Sabeeha’s Kitchen.

Yazidi refugee  Sabeeha Hameed Abdo, who is profoundly deaf and does not know her true age, runs cooking classes in Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales mid-north coast. The lessons, she says, are going down a treat. 

“It is lovely that I can share my Iraqi cooking skills with the Australian people. I feel they like it, they think it is delicious, and they get a lot of enjoyment out of it.”

“When they try it they say it is delicious. I can tell by their face.”

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