Every May since 1996, Ieola Bakr, her two sisters and their mother have enjoyed a weekend getaway at the Akwaaba Mansion. The four-room inn, in a quaint Italian villa-style home, offers a peaceful retreat where the women talk and relax--they walk in the gardens, soak in the Jacuzzi and savor a Southern breakfast with homemade grits and biscuits. But the Akwaaba isn't burrowed deep in the heart of Dixie or even in some bucolic New England town. The inn, dating to the 1860s, is smack in the middle of Brooklyn, N.Y., just 10 blocks from Bakr's apartment. "Our mom loves the...
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