They Seek God in My House They Confiscated
In this parallel universe where we currently live, during such unparalleled double standards, and at a time when Israeli occupation
demolished 380 mosques and 3 churches in its ongoing genocidal campaign on Gaza in a flagrant violation of freedom of worship,
Mona al-Shehabi finds her family home in the al-Baqaa neighborhood of Jerusalem as it had become a synagogue called Heaven’s Gate.
The late Saeed al-Shehabi, along with his cousin Atta, built two townhouses with a unique architectural style and distinctive red stone,
a few meters away from the Jerusalem-Jaffa railway in the al-Baqaa neighborhood, west of Jerusalem, in the 1930s.
During the Nakba of 1948, the family of the late Saeed was forcibly displaced from their home to live in Cairo, and years later, his son Najati moved to Damascus.
Mona and her elder brother Walid studied architecture. Designed in 1928, the blueprint for their grandfather Saeed’s house accompanied them in their professional
lives not merely as an architectural masterpiece, but as a priceless memory from their father, Najati. It was a precious legacy that both siblings along with their sister,
Dr. Lina, and their brother, Eng. Saeed, must recover, no matter how long this endeavor takes.
Anyone who strolls today on the railway park in al-Baqaa and spots the Shaar Hashamayim synagogue on Ha Rakevet Street
should know that is a house that belongs to al-Shehabi’s.
