I saw Ramallah / Mourid Barghouti ; translated by Ahdaf Soueif ; with a foreword by Edward W. Said.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barghūthī, Murīd.

Contributor:

Soueif, Ahdaf.

Said, Edward W.

Series:

Modern Arabic writing.

Modern Arabic writing

Standardized Title:

Raʼaytu Rām Allāh. English

Language:

Arabic

English

Subjects (All):

Barghūthī, Murīd--Travel--West Bank.

Barghūthī, Murīd.

West Bank--Description and travel.

West Bank.

Palestinian Arabs--West Bank--Rām Allāh.

Palestinian Arabs.

Travel.

Barghuthi, Murid.

Physical Description:

xi, 184 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cairo [Egypt] ; New York : American University in Cairo Press, 2000.

Language Note:

Translated from the Arabic.

Summary:

"The first narrative work of the well-known Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti is an autobiographical memoir about the ironies of homecoming. The bridge that Barghouti crosses as a young man leaving his country in 1966 to pursue university studies in Cairo is the same bridge that he uses to cross back in 1996 after thirty long years in the Diaspora." "I Saw Ramallah is about home and homelessness. The harrowing experience of a Palestinian, denied the most elementary human rights in his occupied country and in exile alike, is transformed into a humanist work. Palestine has been appropriated, dispossessed, renamed, changed beyond recognition by the usurpers, yet from the heap of broken images and shattered homes, Barghouti reposssesses his homeland."--Jacket.

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 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. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Contents:

Foreword / by Edward W. Said

1. The Bridge

2. This is Ramallah

3. Deir Ghassanah

4. The Village Square

5. Living in Time

6. Uncle Daddy

7. Displacements

8. Reunion

9. The Daily Day of Judgment

Glossary.

Notes:

Winner of The Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, 1997.

اسم الاصل العربي: رأيت رام الله.

Other Format:

Online version: Barghūthī, Murīd. Raʼaytu Rām Allāh. English. I saw Ramallah.

ISBN:

977424592X

9789774245923

9774244990

9789774244995

OCLC:

46328970

Online:

Contributor biographical information