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