Translated from Arabic by Ahdaf Soueif,Foreward by Edward Said
"An important literary event....One of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement that we now have." —from the Foreward
Winner of the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal, this fierce and moving work is 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 yers 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, yet he is unable to recognize the city of his youth.
A tour de force of memory and reflection, lamentation and resilience, I Saw Ramallah is a deeply humane book, essential to an understanding of today's Middle East.
Anchor Books, 2000, Paperback, ISBN:1-4000-3266-0, 184pp
