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

by Micaela Sahhar

‘If we were different people, to write down these words might be to leave them behind us. But words are our artifacts, and I am seeding a trail for the journey, home.’
What does the daughter of a Nakba survivor inherit? It is not property or tangible heirlooms, nor 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. 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.
‘Micaela Sahhar’s Find Me at the Jaffa Gate is one of the most inventive, thought-provoking and captivating chronicles of Palestinian diasporic life I’ve had the pleasure of reading. It is a memoir written by a poet, poetry written by a novelist, literature written by an academic – it is all these things at once, insisting with a gentle yet unwavering confidence in the power of its unique, brilliantly evocative and genre-defying voice. Sahhar’s love for her family, homeland, the details and intimacies of everyday life; for language, history, archives, photographs and the treasured ephemera of a life in diaspora, shine through every line. The result is a book in which every word is deliberate, each line commands attention, each chapter is a world within a world.’ – Randa Abdel-Fattah, academic and writer, author of 11 Words for Love
‘Micaela Sahhar’s family history has everything that makes any Palestinian family history worth telling and reading about. On the one hand, a rich culture that ranges from distinctive culinary practices to a distinctive sense of humour, and on the other hand, a tragic settler-colonial history of dispossession and oppression leading to a transnational diasporic existence, and that makes for a characteristic sense of space and place. But this is not any book about Palestine. Sahhar is a superior storyteller with a knack for highlighting evocative details. Storytelling, like any craft, embodies in different degrees the labour of the many people who have told stories about one’s subject matter in the past. The more a writer is well-read the more this shows in the historical density and the social complexity of their storytelling. Sahhar’s book is definitely dense and socially complex in this way. This could make for ‘heavy’ reading if it wasn’t for Sahhar’s superior writing skills. Indeed, I would say that more than anything else, this is a book for people who enjoy good writing, regardless of what the story is about. But of course, it matters what this story is about. This is a book about Palestine and Palestinians, and in the way the book is grounded in both the Palestinian tragedy and the Palestinian unlimited capacity to affirm life, the spirit of anti-colonial resistance animates every one of its pages. Sahhar finishes the book saying that like Mahmoud Darwish’s father she hopes that one day she will be able to go to Palestine, to the streets where her family originates from, and shout I am I. And I am here. But in a way, by writing this book, she already does that, if not from Palestine at least from the position she occupies within the transnational space of western colonialism.’ – Ghassan Hage, professor of anthropology at the University of Melbourne and author of The Diasporic Ethnographic Explorations of the Lebanese in the World

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Middle East, Politics

293 pages, Kindle Edition

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.

[Janelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredible read about the authors family history, a story of Palestine and diaspora, ethnic cleansing, stolen homes and so much more. Hard to put down.

[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.

[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.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to this book at a replacement to the cancelled Writers Week due to the political interference of our state's Premier. Ms Sahhar was on the first of three panel discussions organized under the banner of Rivers of Reason: Blak @ Arab Writers in conversation. Ms Sahhar's eloquence had be buy the book so I could get into it fairly quickly. The book expands on her discussion, in that it is a family history standing in as a recent history of the plight of the Palestinian people sold out by the British and to a lesser extent the French at the end of WWII, allowing for their forcible expulsion from their homes which had been in the family for generations - the Nakba. She notes of her Grandfather, who often talked of returning, looking at the deed to the family home in Palestine as well as the keys to the house. After the First Intifada, she made note of something Yitzak Rabin said, and should be remembered for, but is not: "We will fight with all our power against any element that tries by violence to upset our full control over Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip...I know the descriptions of what is going on in the territories, the way it interpreted in the media, is not helping the image of Israel in the world...But I am convinced that above and beyond the temporary problem of an image, the supreme responsibility of our Government is to fight the violence in the territories and to use all the means at our disposal to do that....We will do that, and we will succeed. - NY Times, Dec 24, 1987.
She discusses the generational trauma of the family, while relocated in Australia, as well as the USA that the desire to return to their homes is strong now into the third generation. In discussing her Australian citizenship, she makes comparisons to being yet another invader in this country, just as the British and later most of the Jewish population of what now is called Israel are settler- colonizers. What her family had done to them by British and Jewish imigrees to Palestine, they now did to the Aboriginal people here, and thus the trauma continues to spread. Which was why this collaboration between Palestinian and Blak authors was so important.
She often has to defend her answer to the question of where are you from? As often, when she will reply truthfully that she is from Palestine, the response is often surprise and then denial - you cannot be from there as it does not exist, or some other form of denial. A never ending battle for her and all Palestinians. "The first Prime Minister of Israel, Ben-Gurion, is also patently aware of us (Palestinians): 'If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural; we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does it matter to them? Why should they accept that?'"
And she points out, that just like the Aboriginal people of Australia, the Palestinian people, who lived in the Levant region for thousands of years, have deep roots and connection to the land and are attached to it, to the soil itself. And to lose it by force does not change that attachment.

[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.

[Charli Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book and think the author painted a really visual picture of her family which I enjoyed, but the format was a bit confusing for me and I found myself losing the thread of what was happening. I appreciate though the depiction of a Christian Palestinian family, very interesting. #FreePalestine

[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.

[Aditi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a lovely family memoir that pieced together memories, archives, family stories, and recent and current travels to tell the story of Palestine. While I enjoyed it, I found it a little confusing/hard to follow at times, and there were places where I’d lose interest.