I Saw Ramallah

Author: Mourid Barghouthi

Number of pages: 231

This tight text, charged with intense lyricism, which tells the story of the return after long years of exile to Ramallah in the West Bank in September 1996, is one of the highest forms of writing about the existential experience of the Palestinian diaspora that we now possess, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to say a few words as an introduction to this. Work. However, having myself made a similar trip to Jerusalem (after an absence of 45 years), I know exactly this mixture of feelings, where happiness is mixed with regret, sadness, amazement, discontent, and other feelings that accompany such a return. The greatness, strength, and freshness of Mourid Barghouti’s book lies in that it records In a painfully precise way, this entire emotional mixture is presented, and in its ability to give clarity and serenity to the whirlpool of feelings and thoughts that dominate a person in such situations.