Baking a New Beginning: Khaterah Dayim’s Path from Refugee to Entrepreneur
I came here from Afghanistan in 2021, after living as a refugee for five years in Turkey. We left our country because we weren’t safe. My husband had a money exchange business and groups of armed men would extort him by saying if he didn’t pay them they would not protect him from criminals, but everyone knew that they were the criminals who would cause him harm if he didn’t pay. This was common where we lived, and there were so many stories of people being hijacked and kidnapped and held for ransom. I was always scared that this might happen to my husband or my son. My husband tried to resist them, and these men stopped my husband on his way home from work and stabbed him in the stomach. I fled to Turkey as a refugee with my husband, my two sons, and my daughter who was only one year old at the time. We eventually came to the U.S. as refugees through the UNHCR.
We came to the Bay Area with nothing and didn’t speak English. My sons were 23 and 17, and my daughter was 5. My daughter, Samar, has autism and needs a lot of care. The JFCS were the first ones to help us. They picked us up at the airport and gave us a welcome kit with basic hygiene supplies and three months rent for a place in Fremont. Their case workers and volunteers were lifesavers – they helped us navigate social workers, healthcare, taxes, banks, everything. I would have been lost without that support. And they still help me today – supporting my business, recommending me to their network, sharing my story at their events. I consider them to be family.
With their help, my husband Mohommad and sons found work at a gas station, and I found a good school for my daughter. Food is a big part of Afghan culture, and I have always loved cooking. I would make baked goods for friends and family from our kitchen and study English in the evenings at community college. Everyone kept telling me how good my cooking is and so I decided to start a catering business I named Samar after my daughter.. My eldest son Shazad is a real businessman at heart, and he helped me make an Instagram account to sell my goods. When word-of-mouth spread, he encouraged me to expand and move the bakery business to a store. He found a space to rent, and he and my husband helped me get set up there. I borrowed money from the bank and my community and opened the bakery in November 2024. I work through the night to make the food, and in the afternoons I pick up my daughter and take care of her while my husband runs the bakery. It’s a family affair.
The business is growing. We have a lot of Afghan community come in, but we now have customers from all lover. I make a tres leches cake that my Mexican customers love. We now have two employees who work in the kitchen. It makes me feel good to contribute to the local economy and provide work and a good service to my community. IT is hard – I work so many hours and don’t sleep much. My son works two jobs just so he can help this be successful.
I feel proud to call myself an entrepreneur. In Afghanistan I studied journalism and was a teacher. It was not possible to own a business as a woman there. I won’t say this is my dream – I would like to work in a nice office, on a computer, but this is what I can do to help my family. I feel so grateful to have this opportunity, and to feel that my family is safe from harm. I can now provide my daughter with the support she needs to thrive, too, which I could not have done back home. She is 50% of my life, and the bakery is the other 50%. I never rest!
It makes me sad to know that President Trump has frozen the refugee resettlement program. I don’t know what we would have done without this chance, and I want others in my situation to have the same chance. But as a refugee, you have to work hard. We got help for the first 90 days here, but we had to survive on our own. It is not easy. You have to be a hard worker and patient to be successful.
