I Saw Ramallah is a lyrical, moving story about the return of the Palestinian novelist Mourid Barghouti to Palestine after 30 years of displacement. Between June 1946 and May 1948, Palestinians lost their homes, lands and means of livelihood because of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Barghouti is one of around 6 million Palestinian refugees who were denied the right to go back to their homes in Palestine.
Awarded the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 1997, I Saw Ramallah is full of little joys and many questions about home, the changing realities and the troubling history of Palestine.
Finally Home
In spring 1967, Barghouti left Deir Ghassanah, a village outside of Ramallah, to return to Cairo for his university exams. On June 5, while in the process of winning a university degree, he loses his home as Ramallah has fallen to the Israeli army. In Egypt, he marries and has a son, but is forced to leave the country and settle, without his family, in Budapest.
For 30 years, the Israeli authorities prevented Barghouti from returning to Palestine. In 1996, Barghouti is finally allowed to return to Ramallah. When, at the start of the book, he crosses the bridge from Jordan into Palestine, he keeps asking how his city and its people will receive him. Will he recognize the places and people of his youth? Have they changed? Has he changed?
His journey home is full of mixed emotions: joy at seeing those waiting for him and sadness for those who have died before seeing their home country, those who will never walk in Palestine again, those who will never smell its orange, olive and jasmine trees. Barghouti sees Palestine not only for himself, but for all 6 million Palestinian refugees as well. His joy at being back is mixed with a feeling of guilt that he, not them, is returning.
The Painful Reality
In I Saw Ramallah, the road towards home is filled with catastrophes and hardships. The Israeli occupation has changed everything: the places and the people.
Crossing the Israeli-controlled Bridge between Jordan and Occupied West Bank, underscores the ugly, painful reality of occupation. Barghouti waits for hours on the Jordanian side until the Israeli officials—despite his travel permits—decide whether he can enter or not. After hours of waiting, he finally makes it to Ramallah.
In the drive to Ramallah, Barghouti is surprised to see the Palestinian green countryside marred by the construction of Israeli settlements, what happened to the flowering hills of his memory? Is his memory false, or have things changed (or been changed)?
Lost in Time
Even in Ramallah and Deir Ghassanah, among family and old friends, the questions about Palestine and his old hometown torture him. He asks himself, “Did I really know a great deal about the Palestinian countryside? What does Deir Ghassanah know of you, Mourid?"
"What do they know of the things that you have been through, the things that have shaped you…throughout the thirty years that you have lived far from them?…You too do not know the times they have been through. Their features that you remember are constant and altered at the same time. Have they not changed too? They lived their time here and I lived my time there. Can the two times be patched together?” (p.87)
I Saw Ramallah isa deeply humane book, crucial to any balanced understanding of today’s Palestine and its people.
I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti
American University in Cairo Press, 2000, 184 pp
Badar Salem - Badar is a freelance journalist based in Dubai, UAE. She has a BA in Journalism and Political Science from BirZeit University in Palestine ...
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