I Saw Ramallah

Mourid Barghouti (Anchor Books)

• by Matt Modica

In the opening pages of his moving memoir, I Saw Ramallah, Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti sets out immediately to equate the personal with the political. “Politics is the family at breakfast,” he asserts. “Who is there, and who is missing, and why.”

Putting a human face on the political situation in the Middle East is largely the project of this book about Barghouti's return to his hometown in Palestine after 30 years in exile. The book is unique in both its Arab perspective and the fact that the author rarely takes sides, despite having every right to do so. Studying abroad in 1967 when the Six Days War broke out in his homeland, Barghouti was separated from his family and his homeland for the next 30 years, during which time he developed into one of the preeminent poets of the world. Told in the sparkling prose one would expect from a poet of such skill and magnitude, I Saw Ramallah explores the range of emotions felt upon returning to a homeland greatly changed yet steeped in personal memory.  This rift between nostalgia and present reality is where Barghouti places his characters, memories and notions of occupation.

It is fitting that the American release of this book coincides with the much-publicized efforts of the Bush administration to broker a deal in the region between the figureheads of the combating parties, largely because Barghouti's message speaks to the futility of such token gestures. Considering the deserted, smoldering intersections quickly choking the highways to peace, coupled with a war in Iraq that is quickly turning into a bungled occupation, one would think that, at some point, a collective light might switch on.  But Barghouti seems to argue that until the rest of the world begins to care, politics is really about “who misses whom when the coffee is poured into waiting cups.” When all is said and done - when the press conferences are over and the smug retorts of bureaucrats have fossilized into sound bytes to be reviled by future generations - Barghouti believes we will continue to suffer.