Remembering Saba Abdo

~ In Memoriam: 24 Aug 1930-16 Nov 2025 ~

They’re leaving us one by one. With every passing week, I feel they’re slipping through my fingers too quickly and I can’t hang on to them—to them and their memories. They’re the last generation that has happy memories of Jerusalem (and Palestine more generally).

They’re the last generation that remembers a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan Jerusalem. A kinder, warmer, more welcoming Jerusalem. They’re the last ones who experienced coexistence and intermingling. They’re the ones who went to school, played, shared meals, and started businesses with others, without religion, culture, or ethnic background becoming insurmountable obstacles. 

And they’re the ones who saw it all go up in smoke. They’re the ones whose lives were upended by the introduction of a foreign imported ideology that preached supremacy and segregation, creating an inferior “other”. Making them—the native Jerusalemites—the “other”. They experienced the destruction of their homes, their city, their lives. The lived through traumatic expulsion and profound loss. 

I think of them as the Nakba generation (although the Nakba is ongoing), the ones who first experienced the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in 1948. They are a transitional generation, one that has gone from happy times to violence, war, and dispossession. They fought for survival, they persevered and never forgot. They’re the ones that have been telling us their stories, the stories I and many others have been collecting and treasuring. 

They’re leaving us one by one. The older ones are well into their nineties. They’re the ones that lived there longer, experienced more, and thus have more concrete memories. The younger ones are in their eighties and their memories are often sparse and diffuse—they were too young then. They still retain images and recollections, sometimes vague, but if you push them, they can’t always say how it all fit together. Nevertheless, the emotions attached to those images and recollections are strong, indelible. 

Saba mou

 On 16 November 2025, I woke up to the news that Saba Abdo had taken his last breath in a hospital in Beirut. And just like that, another one of the Nakba generation, who had seen and experienced so much, was gone. This more recent loss hit me badly. 

Saba was a dear friend of my mother as well as a Schtakleff relative. I had been hearing about him for as long as I remember stories of Palestine being told in our family—which is always. 

Several years ago somehow we connected briefly on email. The photo he sent me of himself made my mother—over a dozen years by then into her debilitating stroke that amplified all emotions—giddy with joy. “Saba mou, Saba mou!” (my Saba, my Saba) she kept repeating as she looked at the photo, kissing it, giggling and sobbing at the same time.

It was a brief connection that was interrupted by some upheavals in my personal life at the time. Three years ago we re-connected. I was now knee-deep in family history projects and, as it turned out, so was he. Having already authored a couple of other books about family history, he was now writing about his mother, Zacharena—my great-grandfather John’s first cousin— and her paternal family, the Schtakleffs. He’d been following this blog and wanted my contribution and photos for my branch of the Schtakleffs. 

I was in Cyprus at the time, only a twenty-minute flight from Beirut, so I suggested I just hop over with all my digital archives. He welcomed the idea. 

To Lebanon

And so late at night on a Saturday in mid-September 2023 I found myself in Beirut airport. “Have you been to Lebanon before?” asked the immigration officer. “Yes, when I was 12”, I declared with panache. He laughed and I laughed along with him as I thought back at that trip, my very first out of Cyprus. 

Although I had planned on staying in a hotel so as to be as unobtrusive as possible, Saba offered to host me in his beach “chalet”—what the Lebanese call vacation homes regardless of location. He regretted there was no room in his flat on account of his youngest daughter, Rania, visiting from the US. The taxi driver he had arranged for me was waiting outside the airport and delivered me to the Manar seaside property in Jounieh, a city just north of Beirut, where the concierge gave me the keys to the studio.

Light was just breaking over the beautiful Jounieh bay as I woke up the next morning. The crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean glistened like a mirror. Beirut was spreading to the south, I could spot the storied Casino du Liban to the north, and down below, swimming pools dotted the beach, some functioning, some seemingly destroyed. 

I smiled as I read the lovely note Saba had left to welcome me, and then went out to scope out the neighbourhood. I was surprised to find there was no access to the beach. Most properties, which looked like beach clubs, were padlocked, perhaps because it was so early in the day. Coming from Cyprus where all beaches are public (in theory, at least), I found it offensive. Multi-storey blocks of flats lined the waterfront on the other side of the coastal road. At least they got this right, I thought, instead of building right on the beach as we do. Luxury properties alternated with abutting dilapidated ones; some of the latter, despite the disintegrating concrete, had evidence of habitation, with makeshift covers on windows, laundry hanging on the balconies. Telltale signs of what decades of war had done to this one-time gem of the Mediterranean. 

I had breakfast on the goodies Saba had thoughtfully provided based on our correspondence—bread, fruit, laban (something akin to yoghurt)—and got ready to meet my host. 

They picked me up at 10am: Saba, slender and straight-backed, with a full head of white hair, looking distinguished in a blazer; and his youngest daughter Rania, with their trusty driver Nuhad. This was just a quick initial greeting as Saba had some business to attend to in the morning, but it gave me a first taste of the warmth in which I’d bask for the next few days. They entrusted me to Nuhad to drive me to the Ashrafieh cemetery in Beirut where I’d hoped to locate the grave of my uncle Yanaki Schtakleff. 

Driving in Beirut is nothing short of terrifying: fast-paced and aggressive. The concepts of lanes, speed limits and other sundry traffic laws, if they once existed, have long been extinct. There are cars everywhere, zooming too close to each other, beeping in frenzy. As we drove past the port of Beirut, I caught a glimpse in the distance of what remained of the silos destroyed by the 2020 explosion, “the largest non-nuclear blast in modern history”^⁠1 that killed over 200 people. 

The Greek Orthodox cemetery in the upscale area of Ashrafieh is no less chaotic than the traffic and, frankly, rather bizarre. A good part of it is covered as it’s built amongst the columns of a building above it. I walked around the maze of graves and walls with “drawers”: might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack. Church had just let out so I asked the priest if it would be possible to locate a grave. He said there was a register in the computer and if I were to come back early on Tuesday, he’d look up the name. As it turned out, I wasn’t able to return. Yet another item for my ever-growing to-do-someday list. 

Back in Jounieh, in Saba’s beautiful flat, I was greeted by a big group of smartly dressed people, relatives and friends, sipping coffee. Amongst them Rola, Saba’s other daughter, with her husband Fouad. After the guests left, Fouad drove us to a restaurant with incredible views of the coast where I enjoyed delicious food as I got to know yet another part of my big Schtakleff tribe. 

Family History

In the afternoon, back at Saba’s, it was time to get down to business—the business that brought me to Lebanon: family history. Saba studied architectural engineering and had a long, successful (and sometimes unduly adventurous—more on that later) career with Dar Al-Handasah^⁠, an international multi-disciplinary architecture and engineering consulting company founded in Lebanon in 1956. Having reached the official retirement age in 1995, he was asked by the company chairman to stay on as the Administrative Director of the Beirut office which he did until 2010. 

It was only after fully retiring at the age of 80 that he was able to dedicate himself to another project close to his heart: writing about family history. He first wrote a book about his father’s side of the family, the Abdos.² It was self-published and circulated only amongst family and friends. After a couple of others books, he was now working on the story of his mother’s side, the Schtakleffs. He had given me a draft and wanted my comments. And in the process of reviewing it together, we shared more stories and information.

The book is dedicated to his mother, Zakharena Schtakleff. His love and admiration for her is abundant on the pages. 

Zacharena was born in Jerusalem in 1899, the second of Zacharia Schtakleff’s six children by his second wife, Katerina Kraicheva of Tetovo. Zacharia and his brother George (my great-great-grandfather) had come to Jerusalem from Tetovo, in present-day Republic of Northern Macedonia, sometime around 1860, and set up flour mills and bakeries. The brothers maintained close ties with their ancestral town, and both they and subsequently some of their sons imported their wives from there. 

From his first marriage (to another Katerina) Zacharia had two sons, Stephan and Constantin, born a couple of years apart, ca 1880. They both attended the Russian school in Jerusalem where they learnt Russian and Arabic, and upon graduation joined the businesses. Stephan managed the bakery and Constantin the flour mill. Having both married in the early 1900s, they lived with their own families in the respective buildings where the businesses were housed, while Katerina II with her children had been moved to a separate house close to the flour mill. 

The bonus of talking family history with an architect is the details they are able and eager to provide about buildings, not just people. Saba estimates that the land the Schtakleffs had purchased were two plots of about 800 square metres each. They were located in the commercial neighbourhood of Mamilla, in the area between the Palace Hotel (today’s Waldorf Astoria) and the US Consulate (at least it was the consulate until the US decided to move its embassy to Jerusalem.) In his book, he provides a description of each house with diagrams of the interiors. It’s only in the last few years that I was able to determine the rough location of the businesses but I could not have imagined ever finding so much detail. Describing an extension Stephan had built, he writes: “This new house was constructed on the basis of bearing walls covered with a reinforced concrete slab… This slab was not flat; it had the central part raised in a dome shape every 5 square meter area. The top view looked interesting with a series of continuous domes.”³

Zacharena first attended the Russian primary school, like her older half-brothers, and then continued her education in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate school. With the arrival of the British in Jerusalem, she figured it would be useful to know English. So after graduation she took the time to learn that too, adding yet another feather to her language cap which also included Bulgarian and Arabic. 

English stood her in good stead. According to Saba, Zacharena was taken on as governess to the children of the Governor of Jerusalem Ronald Storrs and shared all meals at the same table with the governor and his wife. Ronald Storrs was the second military governor of Jerusalem, 28 December 1917-29 October 1920, (the first having lasted only two weeks) and subsequently civil governor, 1 July 1920-30 November 1926, after which he was sent to Cyprus as governor. (As I study the history of Palestine and that of my native Cyprus, I keep bumping into the same names of British colonial officials whom I’ve come to think of as “recycled colonials”. One day I might write something about them.) 

However, as it turns out Ronald Storrs didn’t have any children with his wife Louisa Lucy Littleton. Louisa had two, a girl (b 1903) and a boy (b n/a), from her previous marriage to Lt-Col Henry Arthur Clowes who died in Egypt in 1916 in the First World War. Given that Zacharena was born in 1899 according to Saba (or 1897 according to the Register), in 1918 she would have been 19 years old (or 21 max) while Louisa’s eldest would have been 15—a small difference in age. An apocryphal story or was it in reference to some other high British official? Or perhaps she was hired to tutor Storrs’s step-children in one of the languages she was so adept in? Another mystery covered by the sands of the past… 

After Storrs’s departure, Zacharena was employed at the Posts and Telegraph Department (which was responsible for the civil telephone network)⁴ as supervisor at the Jerusalem telephone exchange. Multilingual, dynamic, and disciplined, she managed the twenty or so young women that worked at the switchboard with a firm hand, putting a stop to the gossip that arose from the girls’ listening in on conversations. At some point, she hired her sister Alexandra (b 1902 or 1904) and also her niece Marika Schtakleff (my grandmother’s sister, b 1912) to work as operators.

In 1929 Zacharena married the Palestinian photographer Daoud (David) Abdo. 

The Abdos of Jerusalem

In his book “The Abdo Family of Jerusalem”, Saba traces the roots of the Abdos in Jerusalem to the mid-1700s. Three branches emerged from a man named Abdo, two of which subsequently changed surnames. One of these ancestors was a Greek Orthodox priest and thus adopted the name Khoury (which in Arabic means priest), and moved to Jaffa. Another, Miltiades, emigrated to Greece where he married and changed his surname to Savvides (son of Saba/Savva) to better fit in in the country and with his wife’s family.

In the third branch, the names Daoud and Saba alternate generation after generation on the family tree beginning with Daoud (1845-1905), son of Ibrahim. Daoud’s son Saba was in the shoe business. He’d import leather for his shoes from his cousin Michalis Savvides, the son of Miltiades who in the meantime had moved his family from Greece to Varna, Bulgaria. On account of this trading partnership the cousins would occasionally meet in person—whether in Greece, Bulgaria or Palestine is unclear. In one of those meetings, Saba Abdo met Michalis’s beautiful daughter Despina, born in Varna in 1875, and fell for her. 

It was not unusual in those days for fairly close relatives to marry. Saba Abdo and Despina Savvides married in 1896 in Jerusalem where Despina learnt to speak Arabic although she never managed to shed her foreign accent. The couple lived in Daoud’s house, a large one-storey property, on King George Avenue, close to Terra Sancta College. It had multiple bedrooms to accommodate a large family and was surrounded by a spacious garden full of cypress and fruit trees. Flowers were planted around a fountain, and a large paved terrace hosted the frequent extended family gatherings. 

All of Saba and Despina’s eight children were born in this house: Marie (b 1897), Daoud (b 1899), Margaret (aka Margo, b 1901), Michael (b 1903), Henriette (b 1905), Juliette (b 1909), Acrivi (b 1911) and Katy (b 1914). 

In the meantime, two of Despina’s brothers, Constantinos and Miltiades, learnt the skill of photography in Varna and then emigrated to Palestine where they became professional photographers in Haifa. Eventually Miltiades moved his business and his family to Jerusalem. His studio became one of the best known in the city. In his book, Saba places the studio at Zion Square but other sources, like the photo below, put it on Jaffa Road, right next to Khalil Raad’s studio and opposite Krikorian’s (Krikorian being the very first photographer to open a studio in Jerusalem). Miltiades’s nephew Daoud apprenticed at his studio as did later Miltiades’s own son Manolis (b 1912).

Daoud Abdo, the second of the Abdo children, was born in Jerusalem on 16 November 1899, and attended the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate school. Upon graduation he was conscripted into the Ottoman army, a fate which in those days more often than not proved to be fatal. However, thanks to influential connections and long periods of hiding indoors (and on occasion in a dry well while the military searched houses for deserters) he managed to evade it. 

It was after the First World War and the arrival of the British in Jerusalem that Miltiades took on his nephew as an apprentice in his studio. After several years during which he mastered the arts of photography and oil painting, Daoud opened his own studio on Jaffa Road, next to Boulos Said’s Standard Stationery Co. shop and opposite the Hotel Fast. Daoud “excelled in artistic studio photography by manipulating the printing process so that a subject appeared in multiple positions in the same photograph.”^⁠5 His characteristic embossed watermark, printed in the diagonal in the bottom right-hand corner, is found on many of our family photographs. 

Uncle Colia, my grandmother’s youngest sibling, worked at Daoud’s studio for a short spell doing what he recalled as menial jobs—one of the many odd jobs he did in Jerusalem. 

By far the most notable person to have assisted and learnt from Daoud in his studio was his sister Margo. Over the years she became a photographer in her own right⁶, and can be counted as one of the first Palestinian women photographers. She had become proficient in colouring black-and-white prints as well as retouching negatives. She focused on portraiture and occasionally took group photos outside the studio. When in 1930 Daoud was hired by the Palestine Archaeological Museum as Master Photographer, Margo continued to run the studio by herself and employed an assistant to manage the darkroom. In the 1940s she developed her own signature stamp: M S Abdo. Sadly her equipment and archives were left behind when the family fled during the Nakba. 

Daoud was always smartly dressed in suit and bow tie, with a cigarette, and later a pipe, seemingly attached to his mouth. Although a man of few words, he was quite sociable. In addition to his photographic skills, Daoud was also musical: he played the mandolin and the flute, and would provide entertainment in the gatherings of Greek and Bulgarian relatives and friends. In his younger days he attended musical events, dance parties and picnics. It was in one such outing that he met Zacharena Schtakleff. After a long courtship, Daoud and Zakharena married in Haifa on 24 November 1929. 

Jerusalem Childhood

This is where Saba—Saba mou, as I too have come to think of him—enters the scene: the first of Zacharena and Daoud’s three children, born on 24 August 1930. At the time, the couple rented a flat in Mamilla close to the YMCA, where their second child was also born in 1933, their daughter Katy. Before the arrival in 1936 of the last chid, Teddy, the family moved to Katamon. A larger family required a larger place which they found on the first floor of a building owned by the Kuraitem family who lived downstairs. 

Saba started kindergarten in a highly regarded school run by German nuns. When one day he returned home with a black eye as a result of bullying, Zacharena was incensed. She was fiercely protective of her children and did not suffer fools gladly. The following morning she took him by the hand and confronted the nuns, asking how they could have allowed this to happen. The reply amounted to the What-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger approach: The boy had to learn to defend himself, to be a fighter! Not in the least impressed, Zacharena immediately moved Saba to the kindergarten at the Jerusalem Girls College (JGC). The staff at the JGC included some family members and so Saba was in a friendly environment. For his primary and secondary education, he was enrolled at St George’s School. Established in 1899 and adjacent to the Anglican Cathedral of St George, north of the Old City, it was considered the most prestigious school for boys in Jerusalem. 

Despina’s husband, Saba, died in 1928. As her kids married and moved away, she found herself living at the King George Ave house with only two of her daughters and her sister-in-law Apraksia. The Abdo kids—Saba, his siblings, and cousins—loved their visits to grandmother Despina and the delicious snacks of za’atar Aunt Apraksia would prepare. But the house was too large for four women. So in 1938 they moved to a rented flat next to Daoud’s.

In 1940 Daoud and his mother purchased a newly constructed two-storey residential building in Upper Katamon; a year later Daoud moved his family to the ground floor, while the first floor was rented out. This house too was surrounded by a large garden of flowers and fruit trees which Daoud tended to single-handedly. The chickens, rabbits and pigeons he kept often made for nutritious meals. The boys helped him keep clean the cages of yellow canaries that sang so melodically on the veranda. 

Zacharena and Daoud were close friends with my great-grandparents John and Eugenie Schtakleff whom Saba remembered fondly. John and Eugenie were frequent visitors to their Mamilla flat. They were both quite funny and would always bring treats for the kids and would play with them and make jokes. Saba’s memories of great-grandfather John match my own of his sons. My Schtakleff uncles were characters larger than life: Colia and Nando always clowning around, while Coca, although also funny, was more low-key. After Eugenie’s death, the Abdos were close with Coca and his wife Athena. As for my grandmother Vitsa, she was the godmother of Saba’s sister, Katy. Saba smiled nostalgically as he recalled her beautiful face and just as beautiful personality. 

The Abdos were also close with the family of Stephan Schtakleff and visited them at the bakery in Mamilla. On the Constanin side, Saba was good friends with his son John (Hanna) Schtakleff. Constantin died in 1936 on a visit to Bulgaria, and upon their return his mother moved the family to Katamon, not far from the Abdos. So Saba and Hanna became playmates. Hanna loved music and played the piano and accordion from a young age. Saba would accompany him on his vinyl record purchasing expeditions and would listen to him play his instruments at home. When he turned 16, Saba had a dance party. Among the friends he invited were two of his Schtakleff cousins: Hanna and Costa (Stephan’s youngest daughter). 

The YMCA, with its new facilities built in 1933 opposite the Kind David Hotel, was one of Saba’s favourite places in Jerusalem. He’d get together with his friends there to play sports, “had swimming and gym classes and were also exposed to many activities such as educational lectures, handicrafts, theatre, choir, picnics, ping pong, chess etc. … it was the healthiest atmosphere for young people to be in.”^⁠7

Although Jerusalem escaped the brunt of the Second World War, its streets were filled with Allied soldiers, blackouts were enforced, and some rationing took place. But as soon as the war ended, the conflict between Jews vs Arabs and Brits, which had been in a lull, flared up again. In July 1946, Jewish terrorists blew up the southwest wing of the King David Hotel which housed the British Secretariat. The list of the ninety or so victims included friends and neighbours of the Abdos. The British created security zones in the city surrounded by barbed wire, which required special passes for entry. 

The “troubles” intensified following the 29 November 1947 United Nations vote to partition Palestine. Getting to school which was across town became dangerous, with snipers everywhere. Anna Kassotou, my mother, faced the same difficulty accessing her own school, the Jerusalem Girls College in Rehavia, a Jewish neighbourhood. The director of the Arabic school Al-Ummah in Baq’a, Shukri Harami, invited all students who couldn’t access their schools to join his which was in a quieter area. So Anna along with her good friend and JGC schoolmate Renée Theodory (Saba’s first cousin on the Abdo side) and Saba would walk to their new—and last— Jerusalem school together. Mum used to call Saba “manga” and he wondered what it meant. I explained that in Greek mangas (μάνγκας) is someone who goes about with a swagger or is a rascal.

Nakba

In the morning of 4 January 1948 Saba noticed some unusual activity in the area and alerted his father. Suspecting trouble, Daoud decided to move his family to his mother Despina’s place which was in a safer area. A prescient move as at 1am the following morning the Semiramis hotel in Katamon was blown up by the Haganah, the Jewish militia, killing two dozen people. It was the beginning of the end of Katamon. People started moving away in search of safety. 

The Abdos moved further away, to the house of Zakharena’s youngest sister Marika, in Upper Baq’a. Marika Schtakleff with her husband, George Cattan, and their daughters had temporarily moved to Lebanon where George, an electrical engineer, had secured a job contract. They had asked Marika’s brother Hanna (yet another Hanna/John, lots of them on our family tree!) to look after their house in their absence. So the Abdos joined Hanna at the Cattans’. Very soon, even the somewhat remote neighbourhood of Baq’a didn’t feel safe. Daoud packed off his wife and kids with a convoy of Schtakleffs who fled to Lebanon (driving through Jordan and Syria) while he was determined to stay in order to protect their house from looting. Like many Palestinians, he’d been led to believe that the situation wouldn’t last long and they’d be able to go back to their lives in a few weeks. 

But reality kept chasing him out of Palestine. When Upper Baq’a became too dangerous, he joined his sister Juliette Theodory’s family who had taken refuge in Bethlehem with other cousins. After three months, having finally realised that the situation was hopeless, he reunited with his family in Lebanon.

Life in the Diaspora

Like so many of the Palestinian urbanites who ended up in the diaspora, coming to terms with their new status as refugees was not easy for the Abdos. (Is it ever easy for anyone?) And yet, despite their losses and the many obstacles they had to overcome, they were still the privileged ones who were spared the fate of thousands of their fellow countrymen who could only find shelter in refugee camps. The Abdos, as well as the Schtakleffs, eventually landed on their feet and managed to rebuild their lives and indeed thrive, albeit away from their beloved homeland.

It was a long and arduous road. Daoud moved his family from place to place in Lebanon as he tried to rebuild his photography business while his savings dwindled. He first started out of a room in their rented flat in Souk El Gharb, then moved to Tripoli and eventually to Beirut where he set up the studio Photo Al-Hamra. In the meantime, Saba began his studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB) but interrupted after the first year having realised he needed to pitch in with the family’s struggling finances. Teddy, his brother, also shelved hopes for a university education and got a job at the American Embassy.

After four years as an engineering draftsman with Aramco in Saudi Arabia, Saba returned to the AUB. He graduated in 1959 with a Bachelor’s in Architectural Engineering—and a wife by his side. He met Leila Kurani, who studied Education at AUB, at a New Year’s party and they married in September 1958, a year before Saba’s graduation. 

Family followed: son David (b 1959), and daughters Rola (b 1961) and Rania (b 1964); and so did career. After gaining valuable experience in two architectural and engineering firms, in 1965 he set up his own firm: Saba Abdo & Associates. Five years later, with the messy political and economic situation in Lebanon having had an impact on his business, he joined Dar Al-Handasah as senior architect/project manager. His new job took him all over the world, from Africa to Asia. 

His family was close to those of Katy’s and Teddy’s, his siblings, who in the meantime both had married and had children. They all decided to have a building constructed in Beit Mery on the mountains overlooking Beirut, with a floor for each family. They called it Beitna—our house. It was completed in 1970, and Daoud and Zacharena took the ground floor so they could have a garden again. They shared many happy moments together in their new place. 

But in that part of the world, trouble is never too far. The outbreak of civil war in Lebanon prevented Dar Al-Handasah from operating smoothly so Saba was tasked with opening an office for them in Egypt. In September 1975, amidst fighting and explosions in the streets of Beirut, the family left for Cairo. Setting up a new home and a business wasn’t easy but they were grateful to be in a peaceful place. 

Back in Beirut, as the situation deteriorated, Teddy and Simon Siksek (Katy’s husband) contemplated how to get their own families out of the country to safety. For Daoud, this was a déjà vu: he was forced to abandon his house in Palestine, he wasn’t about to do the same in Lebanon. But once again, reality—in the form of a Grad rocket that landed in the yard while the family huddled in the bathroom of the basement—convinced him there was no choice. All three families eventually relocated to Greece where they once again set out to rebuild their lives. 

By 1977 the situation in Lebanon was relatively calmer so Saba and Leila decided to return for the sake of their children’s education: schools in Lebanon were of a higher standard than those in Cairo. Leila took the children back in September while Saba stayed on in Cairo for one more year. In recognition of the the work he’d done in Cairo, he was offered partnership at the firm in 1981. 

From 1980 to 1987, Saba was the managing director of the Beirut office of Dar Al-Handasah. With the 1982 Israeli invasion and everything that ensued, Lebanon became a hellish place. Running the Dar Al-Handasah office, one of few businesses still functioning, required so much more than architectural and management skills. Saba had to meet and negotiate with different factions and militias, and exercise diplomacy. Until that fateful day…

A Misadventure

From Saba’s big balcony, full of plants, Rania and I had watched a spectacular sunset, and we were now comfortably settled with Saba in his cosy sunroom overlooking Jounieh bay, chatting. All of a sudden, without me asking, Saba launched into the story of his misadventure. I sat transfixed throughout, unable to utter a word. 

Just like every work day, at 8am on 5 January 1987 Saba was picked up to be driven to his office. Fifteen minutes later, along one of Beirut’s main streets, their car was intercepted by four gunmen who jumped out, in plain sight of passers-by. One of them held a gun at his driver’s head while they other three forced Saba into their own car. He was kidnapped! 

In a house in the outskirts of Beirut, he was blindfolded and dumped in a dry water reservoir underground, where he was left alone for the rest of the day in complete darkness. At night, his captors returned and got him to contact his family and ask for ransom. With Leila completely in shock, and David and Rania at university abroad, it fell on his middle child, Rola, to conduct the negotiations in coordination with the police and Dar Al-Handasah’s legal advisor. Writes Saba: “Rola proved to be a capable negotiator and had the nerve to argue with them. She was my life saver.”⁸ 

Rola is about six months younger than me which would make her about 25 years old at the time. I try to imagine my 25-year-old self having to negotiate with ruthless gangsters, under such pressure and with the stakes so high, but my imagination fails me…

In the first chapter of his 2006 book “Out of the Middle East”, the founder and chairman of Dar Al-Handasah, Kamal Shair, writes extensively about Saba’s kidnapping⁹. Upon being informed of the kidnapping, the first step Shair took was to close the office. Not only did he have an obligation to keep the rest of the employees safe but he had also hoped that the anger they’d understandably feel would be directed towards the kidnappers and the authorities, and perhaps they’d put enough pressure on the latter to spur them into action. 

He writes about the staff: “What I hadn’t anticipated was how swift and effective their action would be. They began to organise. They contacted one another and planned a campaign to put pressure on government leaders to act on the hostage-taking problem. … They took their complaints to the top—to the Lebanese prime minister, Rashid Karame. They lobbied their elected representatives. They insisted the government should take firmer action against gangs of kidnappers. There would have been many in the government who shared their concerns and been willing to act. But, by 1986, Lebanon’s security forces had been weakened by years of civil war and by the Israeli invasion. It was because the central powers of law and order were not in complete command of the city that hostage-takers were able to act with impunity. Even so, the government wasn’t entirely powerless. It still had security forces under its control and it started to apply pressure. The gangs began to feel the heat.”

Saba’s captors started making threats about hurting his family so securing his release became critical. After five days during which Saba was kept “under severe conditions, blindfolded, with continuous threats”, an agreement was reached. At 9pm on the day the ransom was delivered, he was released “in a deserted area, on a dark and wintery night, in the suburbs of Beirut, close to a battle that was going on between two rival factions… I had to crawl out of that area avoiding stray bullets until I reached a safer place to walk and was able to find a taxi to take me home.” ¹⁰

Traumatised but mercifully physically unharmed, Saba was in dire need of a holiday. The next morning he went to the office to thank the staff for their tremendous efforts that contributed to his release. Shair then arranged for him, Leila and Rola to go to Jordan for a couple of weeks so they could all recuperate. He was subsequently moved to the Cairo office.

The Final Years

In the years that followed, Saba continued being professionally successful, making important contributions to the work of Dar Al-Handasah all over the world. He saw his family grow and thrive, with all three children marrying, having their own children (his son David’s being named Saba), and pursuing their own careers: David in the UK, Rania in the US, and Rola in Egypt. They all enjoyed many happy moments together, both in Lebanon and in trips abroad. In September 2008 Leila and Saba celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in a beautiful seaside resort in Tuscany, surrounded by their family. He finally retired from Dar Al-Handasah in 2010 and began his family history writings. 

Zacharena and Daoud remained in Greece until their deaths in 1982 and 1989 respectively. Saba writes about his parents: “Katy, Ted and I learned a lot from our parents. From father we learned perseverance, patience and hard work in whatever we were doing, without complaining, because nothing comes easy. While mother instilled in us discipline and good grooming from an early age. We always had to be tidy and clean. … These habits remained with us as we grew older.”¹¹

His beloved wife Leila, his life companion and soulmate for 64 years, died in March 2023 just as she had become a great-grandmother to a namesake. She loved English literature, music and playing bridge. She is remembered as a loving wife, mother and grandmother who “radiated love, warmth and wished everyone she knew well.”¹² I regret not having had the chance to meet her. 

Rola and Fuad returned to Lebanon in 1999 where Saba redesigned the flat they purchased in Beirut. He also designed their beautiful house in their mountain estate of Ebrine. 

It was in Ebrine that Rola and Fuad treated me to a fabulous gathering of all the Lebanese family. Saba calls their place “paradiso” and I couldn’t help but concur. A beautifully designed and appointed house (of which he was very proud) with even more beautiful grounds, nestled up in the mountains, away from it all. 

I had already realised how naive my plan had been to make my visit to Saba as unobtrusive as possible. This was the Middle East after all, where hospitality is next to sacred and invariably dispensed with abundant warmth and generosity. But I was still overwhelmed by the warmth and generosity I received from my hosts in Ebrine, who treated us all to a sumptuous lunch and a most delightful day.

In this gathering, I was particularly thrilled to finally meet Toto—Antoinette Theodory Farah—sister of my mother’s dear friend Renée. I’d been in contact with Toto online for years but this was our first in-person meeting. The irony is that she lived in Cyprus for a spell so she had already met my father and brother. But with me living in the US, our paths had never crossed. We hugged warmly as she sang^⁠ to me: “Marina, Marina, Marina, ti voglio al più presto sposar.” (In Europe and the Middle East my name often elicits some rendition of this old Italian song!)

I was also delighted to meet at last Mary Sacre, the fourth of Louba Schtakleff’s daughters (Louba being one of the daughters of Stephan Schtakleff). Her three sisters live permanently in California so I’ve had the joy of meeting up with them several times but Mary had eluded me. The following afternoon, before my departure, cousin Mary took me on a fascinating walking tour of downtown Beirut where she showed me the sights and explained the troubled and complicated history of the place. 

I returned to Cyprus with my heart full (and a nascent appreciation for Cypriot drivers!) 

A few weeks later I visited Jerusalem. Early on the morning of 7 October 2023 I made my way to the Greek Orthodox cemetery on Mt Zion to tend to my great-great-grandfather George Schtakleff’s grave. I also had an assignment from Saba: to locate in the same cemetery the grave of his own grandfather, of Saba Abdo who died in 1928. It wasn’t meant to be. I have written about that experience in a previous blog post: Jerusalem Interrupted. 

Since then, Saba and I kept in touch through email and the occasional phone call. “Yes, it’s me, you see I am becoming like the moon. I appear once a month, unless it is cloudy, then it will be a little longer!!!!” he wrote once. He enjoyed reading my blog posts and was very complimentary about my writing. 

In June 2025 he emailed asking for a favour. He was now working on his last book, “Saba D Abdo—Autobiography” and wanted to include the photographs I have from Al-Umma school. “At Al-Ummah, I used to walk to school with my two dear cousins, Renee Theodorie and Annoula Kassoti. Those were wonderful days though we were in a middle of a nasty war period.”

I sent him the photos and in August I called him to check in. He was in the car with David on their way somewhere. He was eager to talk but I realised it wasn’t a good time so we agreed to connect later. That was our last conversation. I got word a couple of months later that he was not doing well. I checked in with Rania who confirmed that the disease he’d been wrestling with for years was back and this time he seemed to be losing the battle.

On 16 November 2025 (which incidentally was his father’s birthday) I woke up to a message from Toto letting me know that Saba was gone. I was deeply saddened. But through the tears, I reflected on the fact that he had lived a long, full, and honourable life—which is more than anyone can hope for. Moreover, he’s left a rich legacy not only in his numerous professional accomplishments but more importantly in his beautiful family and his family history documentation.

I will always remember Saba mou with much love and respect. ❖

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Sources & Notes:

For this post I used material from my oral history interviews and email correspondence with Saba Abdo and other family members, as well as Saba’s books on the Abdo, Savvides and Schtakleff families. I also consulted the following sources referenced in the text:

1. Beirut Ammonium Nitrate Explosion: A Man-Made Disaster in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic
   Article by Mazen J El Sayed , 18 Nov 2020, National Library of Medicine
   https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7985624/ ↩︎
2. The Abdo Family of Jerusalem: 1760-2012
   Book by Saba D Abdo, August 2012, self-published ↩︎
3. A Brief History of the Schtakleff Family
   Book by Saba D Abdo, Dec 2023, PDF format ↩︎
4. In his book, Saba refers to it as the Palestine Telegraph and Telegraph Authority (PTT). However, as the following article explains, the telphone network was established under the auspices of the Post and Telegram Department (PTD)
   Cabling and un-cabling Palestine/Israel: Toward a theory of cumulative infrastructural justice
   Article by Yara Sa’di-Ibraheem and Shira Wilkof, Jan 2025, Science Direct
   https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629824001914 ↩︎
5. Palestinian Photographer before 1948: Documenting Life in a Time of Change
   Website of the Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, accessed 8 Feb 2026
   https://www.palquest.org/en/highlight/10522/palestinian-photographers-1948 ↩︎
6. Margaret Abdo: Pioneer Jerusalem Photographer
   Post by Saba Abdo, Institute of Palestine Studies blog, 9 Jun 2023
   https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1653955 ↩︎
7. The Abdo Family of Jerusalem ↩︎
8. The Abdo Family of Jerusalem ↩︎
9. Out of the Middle East: The Emergence of an Arab Global Business
   Book by Kamal A Shair, 2006, I B Tauris ↩︎
10. The Abdo Family of Jerusalem ↩︎
11. The Abdo Family of Jerusalem ↩︎
12. Abdo family announcement of the death of Leila Kourani Abdo, 23 March 2023 ↩︎