Olive Salaman

Olive May Salaman (; 3 March 1921 – 28 December 2007) was a Welsh community activist. For 20 years, she co-owned the Cairo Café in Cardiff, which became a centre of the city's various ethnic minority groups, in particular the Muslim community, which led to her being given the nickname the "mother of Cardiff Yemenis" and being named as one of the most influential early female converts to Islam in the United Kingdom.

Biography

Early life Salaman grew up in a working class Welsh-speaking home in Tredegar, Gwent. She was raised in the Methodist religion. As a child, she and her family moved to Penygraig in the Rhondda Valley. In 1936, at the age of 15, Salaman moved to Cardiff to train as a nurse at the Cardiff Royal Infirmary. Ali was originally from Zabid in what was then the Kingdom of Yemen, and, having been orphaned as a child, emigrated to the United Kingdom at the age of 18. After three weeks together, they got married after Salaman converted to Islam.

Cairo Café and community activism In the 1940s, the Salamans purchased the Cairo Café on Cairo Street, which became a hub for community life in Tiger Bay. Salaman was recognised for synthesising her Welsh and Muslim identities; she spoke Welsh and learned Arabic, cooked Welsh and Arab cuisine, and celebrated both Welsh and Yemeni cultural traditions. During World War II and the Cardiff Blitz, she and her husband established a mosque at the back of the café after the only mosque in Cardiff was destroyed, and started providing religious services as well as Arabic and Islamic lessons; a boarding house was also established to support sailors stuck in the area. They also made and sold halva across the country. The café was visited by notable figures including Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt.

By the 1960s, the Cairo Café had become a community hub for residents of Tiger Bay, with Salaman being described as the "mother of Cardiff Yemenis" and the "anchor" of the community, alongside her husband. Ali Salaman died in 1965; Salaman continued to run the Cairo Café until 1968, when the area was cleared for planned regeneration works which saw most buildings in the area, including the café, demolished. That same year, she was featured in the BBC documentary Tamed and Shabby Tiger. Salaman continued to be a community figure, and attempted to prevent fractures in the Yemeni community there caused by the Yemenite Wars in the 1970s when Yemen was divided into North and South.

Death and legacy Salaman died on 27 December 2007.

Recorded interviews with Salaman in 2004 and 2006 have been stored permanently at the National Archives of Wales in Aberystwyth. Salaman was one of the women whose lives were featured in the 2024 book Muslim Women in Britain 1850–1950 by Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor and Jamie Gilham.

Salaman's son Daoud served as the Chairman of the Wales Islamic Centre at the Cardiff Masjid.