My Palestinian Story

Exploring the Palestinian side of my family

Tag: Katamon (Page 1 of 2)

Remembering Saba Abdo

11 Feb 2026 / / 12 Comments

~ 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. 

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Manolis Kassotis - Jerusalem, 1946 (Still from Nando Schtakleff's film)

An Unrecorded Death

18 Aug 2024 / / 12 Comments

~ The story of my grandfather Manolis Kassotis—Part 1/2 ~

My grandfather’s death was never recorded officially. He died on 5 April 1971 in our home in Nicosia. He used to live with us while our grandmother, Yiayia Vitsa, lived with the Eftys (Efthyvoulou), their youngest daughter’s family. On that day, both grandparents were at our home as our parents had gone abroad for two weeks and had left my brother (age 12) and myself (10) in the care of the elders.

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Ruins of the Semiramis. From Walid Khalidi, ‘Before their Diaspora.’ Photographic collection of the Institute for Palestine Studies

Semiramis Revisited

13 Aug 2021 / / 14 Comments

When you write a story and publish it for the world to read, the story is then set free to follow its own journey. If you’re lucky, you can tag along for the ride and be richer for it. And sometimes the story comes back to you, asking more of you. 

On the 70th anniversary of the January 1948 bombing of the Semiramis Hotel in Katamon, Jerusalem, by the Haganah, the Jewish militia, I published a blog post about the incident. Not only was it a story I had grown up with but also a milestone for the neighbourhood of Katamon. Katamon was the place my mother and her family—her parents and two sisters—called home until it was no longer so and they found themselves as refugees in Cyprus. The end of their lives in their neighbourhood began, as I wrote in that initial post, with the explosion at Villa Semiramis, two doors down from their home. And it was the beginning of the end for Katamon itself for it caused its residents, like my own family, to abandon the neighbourhood in search of safety elsewhere. 

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Anna Kassotou outside her home in Katamon, Jerusalem - Aug 1986
'... my mum with a bunch of basil in her hand, grown by a stranger in her own garden.'

Encounters with the Past (Part 2.2)

12 Apr 2021 / / 15 Comments

Continued from Part 2.1: Touring Israel – Aug 1986

Jerusalem—Aug 1986

Thursday Evening

Back in Jerusalem by early evening, I rushed to the Hilton (today’s Crown Plaza) to meet my mother. She had flown in to Tel Aviv airport and had been transported to the hotel as part of her package tour. It was too late to do anything so we spent the evening in the hotel. Her room was in a top floor, so while it was still light outside we stood on the balcony to survey the area. She was eager to take a look at her hometown but the hotel was at the edge of modern-day Jerusalem so nothing looked familiar. In her days, this part of the city was probably not even developed. 

We then went downstairs for dinner. After nearly a week of subsisting on falafel and shawarma, I was glad to be treated to a nice, juicy steak (those were still my carnivorous days). I’d had an exciting time full of fascinating experiences and adventures, and I couldn’t wait to tell Mum all about it. 

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