I Saw Ramallah

I Saw Ramallah

by Ahdaf Soueif (Translator), Mourid Barghouti (Author), Mourid Barghouti (Author), Ahdaf Soueif (Translator), Edward Said (Introduction)

Synopsis

In 1966, the Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, then twenty-two, left his country to return to university in Cairo. A year later came the Six Day War and Barghouti, like many Palestinians living abroad, was denied entry into his homeland. Thirty years later, he was finally allowed to visit Ramallah, the city he had grown up in. A rickety wooden bridge over a dried up river connects the West Bank to Jordan. It is the very same bridge Barghouti had crossed little knowing that he would not be able return. "I Saw Ramallah", his extraordinarily beautiful account of homecoming, begins at this crossing, filled with its ironies and heartaches. In half bemusement, half joy, Barghouti journeys through Ramallah, keenly aware that the city he had left barely resembles the present-day city scarred by the Occupation - and he discovers in this displacement, that the events of 1967 have made him permanently homeless. Lyrical and impassioned, "I Saw Ramallah" is a profound reflection and lamentation on the conditions of exile.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 208
Edition: New
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 01 Mar 2004

ISBN 10: 0747569274
ISBN 13: 9780747569275
Book Overview: Translated by Ahdaf Souief with an introduction by Edward Said Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature A major seller in the Middle East, this has had 6 editions in Arabic and has been published in Italy, Spain, and America

Media Reviews
'The most eloquent statement in English of what it is like to be a Palestinian today.' Times Literary Supplement 'An important literary event...One of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement that we now have.' Edward Said 'The passionate pain of exile, recounted at the end of a day by a true poet.' John Berger
Author Bio
Mourid Barghouti was born in 1944 near Ramallah. He has published thirteen books of poetry in Arabic including a Collected Works (1997) and was awarded the Palestine Award for Poetry in 2000. Mourid Barghouti lives in Cairo with his wife, the novelist Radwa Ashour. Ahdaf Soueif is the acclaimed author of four books, including the international bestseller and Booker shortlisted The Map of Love.