I Saw Ramallah

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 woodenbridge 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, reflectionand resilience, I Saw Ramallah is deeply humane and is essential to any balanced understanding of today's Middle East.