Everyone loves Raymond? Not here. In the LBC, Everyone loves Woodi.
Woodi Moratti is the unofficial mayor of 2nd Street. Most of us know and love him as the manager of Open Sesame, who brings warmth and a smile to the most bustling business in the Shore. Everyone likes restaurants that offer a personal touch, where you feel both at home and yet a valued customer. Woodi excels in this arena: somehow he’s the boss and the brother, navigating the center of the center of Long Beach, both our favorite troubleshooter and troublemaker. There’s also something fantastically mysterious about Woodi. He’s young and experienced, deft and methodical, foreign and local, minority and European. Woodi is a fashion icon, a cultural enigma, and Clinton-esque in manner: when Woodi speaks to you it’s as if there’s nobody else in the room.
Hey Woodi, what’s your plan? “You mean for tonight or for the rest of my life? Ah, well, okay. I’m gonna meet some friends, hang out, and talk philosophy. And as for tonight – we’ll see what happens.”
Woodi Moratti somehow represents everything we wish we were – more hip, more connected, more social, more cultured, more happy. And, more patriotic.
What?
Yes, more patriotic. You see, what gives Woodi the bounce that we all envy is his daily homage to the American dream. He lives this dream with every waking moment, and takes nothing for granted. “I remember the exact date I got to America – March 1st. I celebrate that day as an anniversary every year. It’s a birthday for me – my life today was born then – and man, it’s a great life to have. I mean, after twenty years in this country I still can’t believe that I’m here.”
Wadid Murad (Woodi’s given name) was born in Beirut in 1965. At the time Lebanon was the crossroads of east and west, with Beirut as its costal jewel and epicenter. Lebanese people were (and still are) a melting pot culture of different religions and ethnicities, known for their combustible passion. By the time Woodi was old enough to truly evaluate his surroundings, life measured up to a powder keg – at age nine his parents divorced and his country acquiesced to a bloody civil war. “My step-mother didn’t want my brother and sister and me with her family….with my dad. So we went to live at the school, where, with the war going on, it was safer to be than at the house. This was very common in Lebanon, especially at that time.”
Between resenting his parents, raising his younger siblings, and surviving in a war-torn city, Woodi maintained positivity by thinking of a future life in America. “I always wanted to come to America. I think it started from watching NBA basketball. Moses Malone, Dr. J, Kareem…..it was a fantasy world compared to what I had. As a teenager I became fanatical about American culture: sports, movies, fashion, everything. I wanted to come to high school in the US and play basketball – that was my dream.”
It takes a very rare and indomitable spirit to remain focused on achieving dreams amid the rubble of civil war. Unless you’ve experienced it, it’s simply unfathomable. How does that environment impact personal development? Woodi reflects on this very notion when he thinks back to his childhood.
“Reality for me was complete chaos. The fighting began when I was a kid – the war and I kind of grew up together, and I watched the whole thing from beginning to end. Once when I was eight years old I went with some friends into a building under construction and stumbled upon four men that had been tied up and butchered…execution style. That was my first experience with violence at that level, and it was a defining moment of my life – it changed me. I wasn’t scared or shocked, but I did decide even as a kid that it wouldn’t define my life. From then on out I became a man of dreams – I couldn’t be a man of reality. At least not that reality.”
Moratti had to channel his dreams somewhere. He found it in the cinemas of Beirut. “To feed my dream fix I would escape to the movie theater and watch American movies. Fortunately they didn’t dub the movies but instead had English with Arabic subtitles. I would study English and American culture at the movies, usually seeing several movies in one day. Seeing LA and seeing New York on the screen was amazing……all I could think about was ‘why can’t I be there?’”
As the war dragged on, Moratti grew into adolescence not knowing what future, if any, laid in store. He began to feel suffocated.
“It became more and more disgusting to live in Lebanon. One of my best friends got shot in the back. There were snipers around us all the time. Going anywhere in and out of school was a dilemma. It was an ugly time because of the car bombs especially. It was so scary…..it’s hard for me to think about it. Terrorists would let off a bomb at the market and people would die, but then they’d wait another 15 minutes until people were gathered around to help the injured. That’s when they’d set off another one. It was sick. It was hell on earth.”
Woodi watched his friends become embittered. He watched families split apart, communities divide, and loved ones disappear. He realized his fate was tied to the choices he would make. “When I was a boy I just kind of progressed with the war, and fortunately survived. But eventually – as I became a teenager – I began to think that I didn’t need to carry it with me… if I found a way I could move on.”
Unfortunately, Moratti didn’t have the ability to simply skip town and start over somewhere else… upon high school graduation the Lebanese government came calling. “When I was 18 I was drafted into the Lebanese Army. I hated it but I had no choice; I’d hoped to get a scholarship to study in America and looked to my father for help but it never came……the Lebanese Army was not a direct participant in the civil war, and so most of the time I was part of peacekeeping operations. But peacekeeping wasn’t very peaceful in Lebanon, believe me. All it did was increase my thirst for freedom, my thirst for living in America.”
Despite some harrowing situations, Woodi finished his tour in the Lebanese Army unscathed. Now twenty years old, he leaped at the opportunity to get out of the country. Moratti made his way to Guinea, a small country in western Africa known for its abject poverty, corruption, and resident visas for Lebanese nationals. Guinea wasn’t the dream, but at least it was a way out of the Beirut pressure cooker. He would spend the following two and a half years in Conakry, Guinea’s capital, slinging imported batteries and tires in local markets and shops. Soon enough Moratti networked his way into the American expatriate community.
As a soldier in the Lebanese Army, Woodi was trained by US Marines. He leveraged that experience by befriending the US Marines in Conakry, and soon enough that graduated to hobnobbing with the American elite in Guinea. “Knowing the Marines in Conakry opened the doors to higher up American government personnel. I later made friends with the commercial attaché at the American Embassy. He helped me to get a visa to the States, and I was on my way.”
In speaking to Woodi Moratti, it is mind-boggling to think of the hurdles he overcame to realize his American dream. Growing up in war for ten years and surviving in the heart of the third world (simply as a purgatory) is something we don’t imagine of 2nd Street’s most personable concierge. But it’s not until Woodi describes his emotions upon finally arriving in the US that we realize the depth of his spirit. “As I came into the country I actually passed the Statue of Liberty. I was weeping. I’m not kidding you. Not softly, I was crying like a baby. I was so nervous…..it was like unbelievable. Finally I’m here. It was intense. After everything I’d been through by myself it was just so intense man.”
Woodi began a ten-year path in America that ultimately brought him to Long Beach and 2nd Street’s Open Sesame. He really feels he has found his true home here. “I’ve found my place here in this community. Long Beach is a beautiful city; it grows on you. People are open here and it doesn’t take long to make friends in this town. And unlike other places your friends don’t have to be exactly like you – people celebrate diversity which works for a guy like me.”
While Woodi Moratti’s exodus might seem to be enough individual achievement for anyone in one lifetime, he describes it to only be a component of his personal evolution. It’s his responsibility now, he feels, to express and share his experiences as a way to give others a broader perspective on the billions of pieces (and voices) that aggregate the human race.
Last year, during the Israeli-Hezbollah War in Lebanon, Woodi decided to drop everything to go out and document what was going on for the rest of the world to see.
“I decided to give up everything I know and see how I can make a difference. I went with a guy sent by the LA Times and I took war photography. I went and took pictures and brought them back to show the consequences of war. I just couldn’t stop thinking about some kid in Beirut now that’s nine years old just like I was thirty years ago… and I know how that kid feels. I know how hard it is to be that kid, and it isn’t fair. It hit my heart hard, and I figured I needed to somehow be involved.”
Woodi’s emotional return to Lebanon had unintended personal consequences, which were ultimately positive. By documenting the unspeakable (and eerily familiar) destruction caused by the conflict, his initial intentions were to find sympathy from anyone and everyone willing to listen. But eventually he realized it was his way to deal with his past – to come full circle with the horror around him during childhood. The trip back to Lebanon has finally released Woodi from his sorrow, and enabled him to focus on what’s ahead in life.
“All of these things – Beirut, the Army, Africa – they are all turning points in my life and every time I’ve managed to put it all behind me – to disconnect myself from the past. Resentment to the war, resentment to my family… looking ahead has always made me stronger. Each time it makes me shine more and more I believe. But after this experience I feel looking back also gives me strength, instead of pain.”
Fortunately for all of us, Woodi Moratti shares his developed and earned perspective without patronizing. If you ask him to see the pictures of the recent war, he will immediately pull out his iPod and show you. Moreover, you will hear the passion in his voice as he describes the subjects of his work.
By understanding (firsthand) the concept of survival, Woodi has simply earned the right to teach us about collective priorities. “When I see people in America that are living in poverty, in the projects, and we’re spending so much money elsewhere it really saddens me. I grew up that way and I know how it feels to be institutionally neglected. Neglect creates bitterness, and bitterness is the key to violence. Want to stop the violence? Don’t neglect the people who need the most help.”
It’s amazing to have a hip restaurateur and shaman all in one. But that is indeed the beauty of Long Beach: everyone has a story to tell, and those with particularly good stories seem to gravitate here. Woodi Moratti embodies this theory, and he’s not done yet. “Long Beach may not be a major urban metropolis, but it makes me want to push myself – you meet so many people from so many places it makes you want to see where they’re from. NBA basketball and Hollywood films help foster my escape to America, and now that I’m here being exposed to all these people and all these things it fosters my desire to again go beyond what I know.”