topics: |  fiction | palestine

blurb:
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.