Noor Tagouri left the night of April 13 buzzing. For the third year in a row, her media production company, At Your Service, and family-owned company Ahmad Tea had hosted an iftar dinner party, commemorating the meal in which Muslims break fast during Ramadan. This year, 35 guests gathered at Chelsea's Eat Offbeat, an immigrant and refugee-run restaurant boasting a charming industrial space with exposed brick, mustard yellow ironwork, and hanging rattan lamp shades and dried flowers.
Tagouri, a Libyan-American journalist and producer, entered the evening with "intentions of connection." The guest list was purposefully varied; among the diners included designer Phillip Lim, Pace Gallery curator Kimberly Drew, chef Hawa Hassan, human rights defender Ayisha Siddiqa, and climate activist Isra Hirsi. Tagouri made sure to orchestrate the seating chart in a way that ensured people were meeting others for the first time, going so far as to even separate couples. Conversation—the kind that's genuine and vulnerable, that penetrates past pleasantries and superficiality—was of the upmost importance.
"It really turned out to be such a special way to disarm people," Tagouri tells BAZAAR. "The question wasn't, 'What do you do?' The question was, 'How is your heart?' And that was the entry point."
While last year's iftar dinner largely celebrated the release of Tagouri's investigative series, Rep: A Story About the Stories We Tell, the goals of this year's event had shifted towards unmasking spirituality, the subject of her latest project. What better place to explore unique spiritual truths than in a room full of people from different industries, backgrounds, and faiths?
"I kind of used this dinner as a heart check-in," Tagouri says. "I love that the dinners serve as research in how we can just show up better for each other, but also how we can ask better questions."
But, before opening their hearts, guests filled their bellies.
At sunset, Syrian chef Diaa Alhanoun stocked tables with abundantly mouthwatering appetizers like velvety hummus, baba ganoush, kibbeh, and lentil soup. The main course consisted of mansaf—a dish with beef over a bed of yellow rice and yogurt sauce—as well as a vegan eggplant curry. For dessert, guests sipped on tea and munched on flaky baklava and knafeh nabulsieh, a crisp sugary pastry topped with cheese and pistachio.
"We had so many moments of celebration of the people who were making the food for us, who were serving the food for us. Every single one of them had a really powerful and unique story of how they ended up in America," Tagouri reflects. "The entire dinner was just constant cheering and laughter and applauding and loving. There's an older woman who was working there who, every time she came out of the back kitchen area, people would just go wild and started clapping for her."
She added, "It just felt really different and really wholesome, and that's what we tried to do. I really believe that comes from getting people out of their comfort zones, but in a place where there is this sense of trust."
After dinner, tables were pushed close together as Tagouri—clad in a blue-and-white floral Zimmerman dress, Valentino pumps with a kitten heel, and a silk scarf from Coach—led the group in a round table discussion about spirituality. Her own frankness about the "really big questions" she had been asking herself prompted frankness in return.
"People really were able to reveal themselves," she says. "I was sharing things that I was going through that I didn't realize I could say out loud. And it was all reciprocated. I felt this buzz afterwards where I was just like, 'Oh, this is what community can feel like if we just like move past the performances of it all and just really, really show up exactly how we are in that moment.' And I loved that we get the opportunity to do this during the month of Ramadan, because it's a month of really working on your ego and humbling yourself and moving inward."
The discussion also confirmed what Tagouri says she had already been thinking about prior to the dinner party. "Community doesn't have to just be people of the same faith, tradition, heritage, ethnic background, or whatever it is. Community can be people who choose to love and be loved," she says. "It felt like what possibility really feels like, just, 'Oh, there can be more of this. And it doesn't always have to be over the top and performative. It can just be truthful.'"
As an associate editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, Chelsey keeps a finger on the pulse on all things celeb news. She also writes on social movements, connecting with activists leading the fight on workers' rights, climate justice, and more. Offline, she’s probably spending too much time on TikTok, rewatching Emma (the 2020 version, of course), or buying yet another corset.
