MIDTOWN MANHATTAN — On a bone-chilling winter night in 1986, a 20-year-old immigrant from Ankara, Turkey, who arrived just three days earlier, stumbled through the streets of a New Jersey town, lost and unable to speak English.
Ali Riza Doğan had no way to call his uncle for help or directions. There weren’t any cell phones yet, and the young restaurant worker couldn’t find a payphone.
Feeling lost, alone, and not knowing English, Doğan said he “almost cried.”
But then he found an unlocked door to a boarded-up building, which he entered to escape the wintry blast.
“I went to the fifth-floor hallway, and they had carpet and heat on there,” Doğan recalled. “I slept there overnight. It was like a five-star hotel.”
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When morning came, he went to a shopping area, where he got help calling his uncle, who came and picked him up.
Doğan operates the popular Ali Baba Mediterranean & Turkish Cuisine on East 53rd Street in Midtown. Yet his humble beginnings in the U.S. stay with him.
“I never forget that day,” Doğan said of the time he was lost. “It is a very bad memory for me still.”
And when that happens — like the 14 degrees below zero on Feb. 8 — he prints out a sign that he tapes to his restaurant’s window. It reads: “If anyone is staying outside tonight, you can stay inside. The heat is on overnight.
“We can sleep in peace when we remember God is awake.”
Like that hallway 40 years ago, shelter seekers can sleep inside the restaurant’s vestibule. There is no access to the dining area or kitchen, but the small space is heated and dry.
Doğan sat down with The Tablet on March 10 when the mercury reached 77 degrees. Just days earlier, the daytime temperatures were frigid enough to retain the snow that blanketed the city for several weeks.
But Doğan’s charity doesn’t end when spring arrives.
Each Wednesday, he joins other volunteers in serving food from his restaurant and other eateries to homeless people. He shares savory entrees of lamb and chicken, along with various Mediterranean side dishes.
Doğan’s Muslim faith calls upon believers to help the poor, but he noted that all people deserve kindness. Christians can relate.
Matthew 25:40 says, “And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ ”
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Also, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1397) says, “The Eucharist commits us to the poor. To receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest.”
To that end, the Church calls upon Catholics to perform or support “corporal works of mercy,” such as feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and visiting the sick, including those in prison.
That’s easy to do, Doğan said, when people never forget where they came from, including the bad memories of being cold, lost, and unable to communicate in a new country.
“Make someone happy,” he said. “That’s the most important thing in life. It doesn’t matter what religion you are, what country you [are from], what color you are — it doesn’t make a difference.
“We are all human beings, and we only want God watching us.”