Find me at the Jaffa Gate: An encyclopaedia of a Palestinian family

by Micaela Sahhar

'What is the task but to find my way back to the unfragmentation of the world as we knew it; to collect the uncollected, to make the unmade. To refuse victimhood even when annihilation seems to insist on it. To make a thing out of nothing, to make a diaspora into something, real enough to share.'

What does the daughter of a Nakba survivor inherit? It is not property or tangible heirlooms, none of which can crisscross the globe with their refugee owners. It is not the streets and neighbourhoods of a father's childhood and the deep roots of family who have lived in one place, Jerusalem, for generation upon generation.

Fixing her gaze on moments, places and objects – from the streets of Bethlehem to the Palestinian neighbourhoods of the New Jerusalem – Micaela Sahhar assembles a story of Palestinian diaspora, returning to the origins of violence in the Nakba. Find me at the Jaffa Gate is a book about the gaps and blank spaces that cannot be easily recounted, but which insists on the vibrant reality of chance, fragments and memory to reclaim a place called home.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2025

Reviews

[Hala · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important and moving book that resonated with me in so many ways. An unforgettable tale of resilience and steadfastness in the face of unimaginable injustices, this is an outstanding work in every way. If you want to understand the experience of the Palestinian diaspora, I would simply implore you to read this brilliant work. Thank you Micaela for writing this book, your family is quite remarkable and I will forever treasure this work.

[Peter Hodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book, a celebration of family and culture. Overlaid by the sadness of loss.

I was captured immediately by the depictions of post-war Williamstown and Newport in Melbourne, where the migrant family settled in the aftermath of the Nakba.

For those who might welcome a very human way into the Palestinian story, this might be your book.

[Elias Jahshan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What a book.

[Natasha (jouljet) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A family memoir, piecing together memories, archives, family stories, and recent and current travels, to tell the story of Palestine. From before, the point of the Nakba, the after, the dispossession and displacement, and the longing to return.

Through mostly small chapters, Michaela shares her family's story, and stories. Intergenerational, across lifetimes and the globe. Tracing her father's family and his own story, she also forges her own through visits to Palestine.

The sights, the streets, the characters and every day life. The family connections, and fractures as some flee and find themselves so far away, making a new life.

A read that brings to life multi-generations from a Palestinian family, making it feel like you are there with them, that you know them, that you are sitting with them absorbing their stories.

[Issy Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is important. An exploration of all of the ways being forcibly displaced from your homeland influences a person, a family and a people. And a documentation of one family’s web of connection to their country, their culture and to each other. Free Palestine.

[Caren]

Sahhar focused on what was lost as a Palestinian and wrote to ensure that the beauty of her family and culture is not forgottten.

[Denzel Byrne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it was very creatively written. It was a way of storytelling that wasn’t familiar to me which was quite jarring, but I enjoyed getting her perspective as a Palestinian.