London’s First Palestinian Cultural Centre Is Within Arm’s Reach

High Holborn is one of London’s busiest streets and leads to some of its most synonymous locations. The British Museum, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Opera House are all a short walk away; the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament are roughly equidistant to the east and west. Just off the street, above the restaurant he runs using family recipes, Osama Qashoo is reconstructing a cool, calm corner of the Middle East, something he has dreamt of doing since he arrived in London as a refugee 17 years ago: Palestine House, a cultural centre and co-working space spread across five storeys of a former language school.

When I met Qashoo in his restaurant, Hiba Express, he took me upstairs to an intimate, quiet space, styled like a traditional Palestinian café. The first thing I notice on the first floor is the sound of the fountain, in a long, wide space with dining tables and chairs, complete with lattice skylights, wood beams and mosaic floors. with a giant wooden key – the traditional symbol of exiled Palestinians – hung suspended above the main atrium.

Qashoo pointed out the yellow-orange exposed stone walls. “I couldn’t find this colour in the UK – it’s available in warmer countries. This is five layers of orange.

“In Palestine, we have stones coloured by the region, from dark black to bright white, and we say that memories and lives are stored in those stones. … You communicate culture through a place – in the walls, furniture and décor. The idea is still evolving – the rooms are named after different parts of Palestine. Hopefully, it tells a story.”

Telling Palestinian stories is Qashoo’s purpose in life. The 43-year-old was studying engineering at An-Najah National University in Nablus in the West Bank when the second intifada started in September 2000. The uprising scuppered Qashoo’s plans of graduating because nobody was allowed to leave his village. It also gave him a new calling.

“We wanted to show the world what was happening, but there was no Facebook or Twitter – or even digital cameras, you had to use tapes. Western journalists came to Bethlehem or Ramallah, but villages and small towns in the north of the West Bank were ignored,” he told me.

Qashoo found a broken VHS camera in the landfill around the settlements. He filled it with stones, carried it to the checkpoint and started filming. He told the Israeli soldiers his name was Lorenzo and that he was from Italy. He pretended to film a Japanese journalist the soldiers attacked; when the soldiers saw him filming, they released the journalist. He asked to buy Qashoo’s tape for Japanese TV. “I said ‘I’m recording on stones, do you get it? Take a stone!’” The journalist declined but gave him a working camera as a token of his gratitude.

Qashoo came to the UK in 2003 and wound up at the National Film & Television School in Beaconsfield, on the outskirts of London, where he made several short documentaries in 2004-5. “I lied to get in, saying I was British and that my parents had lots of money,” Qashoo told me. “They saw the rushes I’d brought from Palestine, and said they hadn’t seen anything like this before.” After graduating, Qashoo managed to raise £3m for his first feature film. The project was stopped in its tracks, however, after funders caught wind of his pro-Palestine advocacy, for which he was detained by the Israelis and subsequently deported (he appeared on television talking about the Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla in May 2010 that killed 10 people, having written about the Free Gaza Movement for the Guardian in 2008). It was then that Qashoo “switched from film to falafels”, returning to London “homeless, with nothing” and setting up Hiba – and now, Palestine House.

Qashoo tells me they are close to finishing the cultural centre – the second in the UK, the first having been established 11 years ago in Bristol. Palestine House is already hosting a few informal but regular events to build an audience and raise money to complete all five floors – they need a further £300,000 if they are to officially open later this year, as planned. He says crowdfunding is “difficult” right now because “attention is elsewhere”, but he has rejected some funding from larger institutions, which he declines to name, ”because I don’t want anyone else to influence or control the narrative of this space”.

The centre’s co-working space, which will operate on a membership basis, is also intended to help subsidise the centre’s other activities. “I want people to be taken away from central London, where it’s noisy and crowded,” he said. “But to survive here, we’ve used the co-working model – people can hold meetings, write articles, be creative and enjoy the space. It will be a diverse space where people can do a range of things but it has a Palestinian identity, which people need to respect.”

Qashoo has huge ambitions for the space: he hopes there will be more than 500 events a year, and a dedicated programmer. The space has already started to hold a cluster of events to grow awareness and fundraise, including shared brunches on the first floor on Sundays. On Saturdays, there is a drop-in bazaar selling ingredients, books, and clothes, with activities such as calligraphy and sand painting. This Saturday it will host its “inaugural event”, Seeds of Freedom, including musical performances; an exhibition of artworks by Youssef Aly, and poetry by Sleman Dabsha and Meriem Jouti; Palestinian food; and a collection of Arabic books. “The space will be like a chameleon – that’s what’s beautiful about it,” said Qashoo.

This insistence on the vibrancy of Palestinian life is quite obviously in act of resistance.. “We are fighting so much not to become animals, even though they’re branding us as animals,” he said. “When I came to London 17 years ago, my friends in Hornsey and Crouch End said ‘I’m surprised you’re still human.’ Palestinians are teaching people how to be resilient, how to survive.” Qashoo means this quite literally. He still has family in the West Bank; his adopted son was hit by bullets fired from an IDF helicopter last month. He doesn’t know if he’s still alive.

Qashoo is confident he can build something from nothing. He recalls a story his grandmother once told him. One day, a man arrived at a hungry village. “Tomorrow, everyone is invited for a stone soup, up in the mountains,” he announced. “We are desperate and this guy thinks we are idiots,” the villagers replied. He went ahead, gathering the stones and the wood, putting the pot on the fire. One villager offered to help: “I know it’s a stone soup, but I have a few carrots. Can I put them in?” The man said yes. Another asked if he could throw in some onions. The man said yes. Soon, everyone in the village was bringing ingredients and by the end it wasn’t a stone soup but a delicious meal.

“I hope I’m doing the same thing,” says Qashoo. “This is the incubator we’re trying to create for every marginalised community in London. For makers, chefs, artists, journalists, lawyers, leaders, grassroots start-ups, whatever. It’s going to be a place where everybody can be fed and loved.”

Update, 12 August 2024: This piece was updated to reflect the fact that Palestine House is the second Palestinian cultural centre in the UK, though the first in London. The first UK cultural centre was opened in Bristol in 2013.