Cafe Yafa: A Palestinian bookshop reviving literary culture
Cafe Yafa continues a rich Palestinian literary culture, decades after the Nakba destroyed the libraries of Palestine.
Jaffa – “Jaffa will be a Jewish city … Allowing Arabs to return to Jaffa would not be righteousness but stupidity,” David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary in June 1948.
Israel’s first prime minister, who arrived in Palestine at Jaffa port in 1910, was writing after right-wing Irgun forces razed Jaffa in April and expelled nearly 70,000 Palestinian residents.
After the bombs stopped, looting began: Ben-Gurion was one of the strongest supporters of the expropriation of Palestinian property. Months later, thousands of Arabic books lay on the streets, “badly damaged during the war … wind, rain and sun”, according to Adam Raz, historian and author of The Looting of Arab Property in the 1948 War.
The books came from public and private libraries, mosque and church collections, the reading rooms of Jaffa’s social clubs, and seven modern bookshops that lined Jaffa’s shopping district.
Arabic bookshops disappeared from Jaffa for 55 years, until Michel Raheb of Ramla first decided to open one in 2003. He decided Jaffa was the best city for it and Cafe Yafa opened its doors that same year.
Books in a ghetto
Raheb wants to share his love for books. Years earlier, in the 1990s, he had volunteered his time and personal collection of thousands of Arabic books to open a library in his local Ramla church.
He made Cafe Yafa into a community gathering spot, offering coffee and Arabic cuisine to Palestinian and Israeli guests who come to shop, snack, chat, and read.
For Palestinians who come from all over the country, Cafe Yafa is an essential space, as there are few Arabic bookshops anywhere in Israel and none south of Jaffa.
The profound loss of Palestine’s written heritage still lingers with many, who recall the words of Khalil Sakakini after his private library in Jerusalem was robbed: “Goodbye, my books! Farewell to the house of wisdom … How much midnight oil did I burn with you reading and writing, in the silence of the night while the people slept!
“Were you looted? Burned? … Did you find your way to the grocer, your pages wrapping onions?”