A fierce and moving memoir on returning to Palestine, the meaning of exile and homeland, and the habitual place and status of a person, from the late Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti.
Barred from his homeland after 1967’s Six-Day War, Barghouti spent thirty years in exile: shuttling between the world’s cities, yet secure in none of them; separated from his family for years at a time; never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest.
As he returns to Ramallah for the first time since the Israeli occupation, crossing a wooden
bridge over the Jordan River, Barghouti is unable to recognise the city of his youth. He discovers how the joy of return and reunion is accompanied by a feeling of insurmountable loss.
A tour de force of memory, reflection
and resilience, I Saw Ramallah is deeply humane and is essential to any balanced understanding of today’s Middle East.
เกี่ยวกับผู้แต่ง
Ahdaf Soueif is the author of two novels, In the Eye of the Sun and The Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999; a story collection, I Think of You; and an essay collection, Mezzaterra: Notes from the Common Ground. She lives in Cairo, where she was born.