The disquieting sense of ‘not yet being there’ sets the tone for the entire book, where the theme is not merely the physical violence of occupation, but rather occupation’s ability to rob the Palestinian of his simplest and even banal connections to self and place.Īs Barghouti moves from the bridge to Ramallah, on to his village and then back to Ramallah, he records his impressions, compares his memories with the present day reality, and, most importantly, he begins to weave in the crucial stories of his life in Egypt, his subsequent deportation under Sadat, and his existence in Hungary where he lived, worked, and wrote for many years. It is an encounter fraught with questions, ambiguities, regret, and a joy that is diminished by the yawning abyss between the “Palestine” of longing and political symbols, and the very scarred, real terrain. At this infamous “Bridge of No Return,” he encounters not a time warp, but rather a warped sense of his own relationship to a place that he has dreamed of for so long. “I Saw Ramallah” begins naturally at the Allenby Bridge, which, to his consternation, remains essentially under Israeli control. This momentous yet bittersweet return to his homeland provides a fitting context for this candid and poignant memoir of Barghouti’s 30 years of exile.
The occasion of the Oslo Accords allowed some Palestinians, including Barghouti, to gain entry permits to the occupied territories. Within a few days, the whole of the West Bank had been occupied by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and Barghouti found himself one of the many “displaced” persons, barred for three decades from his home.
Translated from the Arabic by Ahdaf SoueifĪmerican University in Cairo Press, 2000, 184 ppīorn in the village of Deir Ghassanah near Ramallah in 1944, well-known poet Mourid Barghouti was a literature student in Cairo when the 1967 war broke out.
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