Find Me at the Jaffa Gate

In a powerful memoir, Jim Kable traces the displacement of a Palestinian family, their memories, and their enduring connection to the homeland they were forced to leave.

Let me state at the beginning of this review: Find Me at the Jaffa Gate For me, it is one of the candidates for the book of the year, and if the reader is not aware of this, please know that it has already received many awards, including the 2026 Award. UTS Glenda Adams New Writing Award; Non-fiction category of the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (VPLA); and was longlisted for 2026 Stella Award.

The front cover features endorsements from three highly respected author-reviewers: Evelyn Araluen, Randa Abdülfettah And Antony Loewenstein. The book it reminded me of the most, almost from the very beginning: André Dao‘s my mother. Another book about a grandchild’s search for a family and their stories scattered around the world. my motherIt was fictionalized.

This is a memoir of search and reconstruction written by a Melbourne-born Palestinian woman whose Christian family found themselves deported by the circumstances surrounding and including her. Nakba From Jerusalem in 1948. Some of the family goes to the USA and Canada, and some goes to Australia. Some remain in Palestine.

Writer Micaela ShahharHis grandparents, father Joey (named after a Jerusalem Armenian friend of his parents who had been exiled to Amman in early 1948), aunts, uncles, and cousins, and a partial family tree are included among the final pages of this book and help clarify the Palestinians’ maternal and paternal lines.

The tone of resistance to erasure as Palestinians begins when five-year-old Micaela is told by a music teacher that not only does her name differ (an unpleasant difference) but that she cannot possibly be Palestinian when she says she is Palestinian.

This is a true story, made up of things the author knows as well as things he doesn’t know, and begins with two real words: poetry and Palestine. He writes that this is the story of three continents and two islands.

Still, the story involves putting the pieces together. While the author travels to points of the diaspora where his family is dispersed, he also travels to elements still in (Israeli) Jerusalem (where a Sahhar cousin lives, whose car license plates provide some ease of travel in taking him to Bethlehem) and Palestine. In Arizona and California, in New Jersey and Phoenix, Adelaide and Melbourne, Amman and Montréal and Bethlehem, someone asks him if he’s chasing his dreams.

Sahhar maneuvers on foot at border crossings, revealing the ugliness of Israeli controls and road travel divided by the Wall. One day, his search was interrupted by a Zionist who thought he was a Jew, and he eventually managed to escape his clawing hands.

Her cousin is detained for seven hours at a border crossing because an Israeli female guard wants to date her. He shows her that he is married and has a son. Her grandfather in Australia holds the key to the family house in Jerusalem, which they left after the attacks in the region. Hospitals are filling up, Micaela’s father could be born at any time, and the family is prevented from returning for the safety of hospitals in Amman. This is until their final passage by ship to Melbourne. Novel In 1952.

Micaela Sahhar’s grandmother, Ellen’s father, Hanna, owns a restaurant in Bethlehem and later near Bethlehem. Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem. All their children were born in Bethlehem. Stories of contact with relatives are interspersed with stories of food – The Best Cake (hilbe), becomes the heir according to his grandmother’s description. related to lady (moulding and confectionery and Easter Arabic cakes).

There is a particularly poignant section based on a poem. Taha Muhammad Ali titled Revenge.

The first verse traces all the satisfactions involved in revenge, but the next verse comes to a different conclusion:

But if it comes to light

When my rival shows up

He had a mother waiting for him

Then I wouldn’t kill him even if I could.

Last verse:

But if he returns

out to be on your own

Like a branch cut from a tree…

I would be glad instead

ignoring him when i pass by

on the street – as I convinced myself

not paying any attention to it

It was a kind of revenge in itself.

There are references to movies (Elia Suleiman‘s Divine Intervention) and books and expressions: Hopefully And elephant mish mish. And along those lines, a heartbreaking reflection on the fact that three-quarters of a million Palestinians, a few generations removed from the Nakba of 1948 – were then driven from their homes, businesses and lives by the Zionists, driven by fears created by the Zionist terrorist groups Irgun and the Haganah: “There is not a single Palestinian who does not think about what they will endure at night if the Nakba falls again, and whether they will take only a small suitcase before the flight.”

Chapter titled ‘The Road to the Bomb Shelter’ The film, with an Israeli friend, includes references to the fear instilled in Israelis about visiting Palestinian areas and coming into close contact with armed Israelis, as well as references to Judea and Samaria by an Eastern European filmmaker in the car in which they are traveling. The names of the two movies: Salt of this Sea And To see if I’m smiling.

Later that evening, he and an activist friend can visit the house built by his father at number 8 Asa Street. There appears to be Hebrew graffiti on the fence meaning “this is the road to the bomb shelter.” It’s the chapter that tells the story of his activist friend’s presence in Bethlehem – which was only possible if he was there as a soldier – and explains how, when he was 21, he was assigned to a tank that was part of the UN. Siege of the Church of the Nativity.

He tells Micaela that he cried in the tank, and then cried even harder when he realized the brutality of the service for himself and, most importantly, for the people he literally threatened to kill with his tank.

I will end this review with a quote from the book of Israel’s first Prime Minister. David Ben Gurion:

If I were an Arab leader, I would never agree with Israel. This is natural. We took over their country. Of course God promised us this, but what do they care?

They see only one thing: We came here and stole their country. Why would they accept this?

Apart from God’s dubious promise to the Ashkenazim, this particular insight should be chalked up to the unearthing of current research. Royal Commission Open (supposed) Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

Find Me at the Jaffa Gate Available at: UNSW Press Ltd..

This book was reviewed by an IA Book Club member. If you want to buy free get high quality books and your review It was published On IA, subscribe to receive your email free IA Book Club membership.

Jim Kable was a secondary school teacher of English (including EAL), History and Japanese before spending most of the last two decades teaching English in Japan in the 1990s and 2000s. For a short period of two years, from 2020 to 2022, he was a member of the now-defunct New Liberals. He has a sharp and knowledgeable perspective on politics.

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