Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

Translated from the Original Arabic by Ahdaf Soueif | Foreword by Edward W. Said

I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti

A fierce and moving work and an unparalleled rendering of the human aspects of the Palestinian predicament.

Barred from his homeland after 1967’s Six-Day War, the poet Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years in exile—shuttling among 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 home for the first time since the Israeli occupation, Barghouti crosses a wooden bridge over the Jordan River into Ramallah and is unable to recognize the city of his youth. Sifting through memories of the old Palestine as they come up against what he now encounters in this mere “idea of Palestine,” he discovers what it means to be deprived not only of a homeland but of “the habitual place and status of a person.”

A tour de force of memory and reflection, lamentation and resilience, I Saw Ramallah is a deeply humane book, essential to any balanced understanding of today’s Middle East.

About the Book: From Booklist

Poet Barghouti puts a personal face on the plight of displaced Palestinians in this account that is as much politically tinged lament as memoir. Thirty years—and nine volumes of verse—after being deported from his home in Cairo, he was permitted to return to the home of his youth on the West Bank in 1997. "Displacement is like death," he states. "One thinks it happens only to other people." Yet he describes himself as just one of four million displaced Palestinians who have no airline, police, TV, or government. Several months after the Six Days War, when his son was just five months old, Barghouti was taken for "preventative deportation" and separated from his family for most of the next 17 years before being allowed back in Egypt.

He targets Anwar Sadat, responsible for the deportation that deprived him of having other children, and various Israeli leaders, who headed the occupation he calls a crime. Interspersed vignettes portraying the author's life are often charming but sometimes confusing in terms of chronology and emphasis—only at midbook is his deportation detailed, and even then it's not fully explained—and repetition dulls the message.

Still, this relentless account, first published in 1997 in the Arab world, reflects the acuity and sensitivity of a poet (with an occasional verse included) and provides an underrepresented point of view.

Praise for I Saw Ramallah:

“The most eloquent statement in English of what it is like to be a Palestinian today.... No other book so well explains the background to recent events in Palestine/Israel.”
—The Times Literary Supplement

“An important literary event.... One of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement that we now have.”
—Edward W. Said, from the Foreword

“Forceful, lyrical, evocative.... A wonderful read.”
—The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

“Stirring.... Poignant.... Compelling.... I Saw Ramallah is a magnificent addition to world literature. It is picturesque and lifelike. Its evocative images touch, move, and inspire.”
—Middle East Studies Association Bulletin

“Marvelous.... A beautifully constructed and moving memoir.”
—Al-Ahram Weekly

“An honest and lyrical account from the Palestinian Diaspora.... This book describes in detail the damage done to the Palestinian people in the most beautiful prose.... Because of his frankness and calm tone, Barghouti has ensured that this life story will stay with the reader a long time after all the shouting and politicking stops.”
—Cairo Times

“A rare memoir.... Humane and eloquent.”
—In These Times

About the Author: Mourid Barghouti

Mourid Barghouti was born in the West Bank in 1944 and graduated from Cairo University in 1967. His poems have been published in Beirut, Amman, and Cairo, and his collected works were published in Beirut in 1997. He lives in Cairo.

Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England. She is the author of the novels In the Eye of the Sun and The Map of Love and I Think of You: Selected Stories from Aisha and Sandpiper.

Edward W. Said was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism, and Out of Place: A Memoir.