Despair of the heart

Peter Clark

I SAW RAMALLAH. By Mourid Barghouti, Translated by Ahdaf Soueif. 184pp. Cairo:

American University Press; distributed in the UK by Eurospan.

Mourid Barghouti is a Palestinian poet from near Ramallah. At the time of the June 1967 war, he was a student at the University of Cairo. His village was part of the West Bank occupied by Israel, and Barghouti was not permitted to return. He married the Egyptian novelist Radwa Ashour and settled in Cairo. In

1977, when President Sadat visited Israel, Palestinian activists and alleged activists in Egypt were deported. Among the latter was Mourid Barghouti. Ashour was pregnant with their only child, and for the next fifteen years or so the family were able to be together only in those foreign capitals where Barghouti could get work. In 1996, he was permitted to return to the place of his birth, and I Saw Ramallah is the account of that return. It has been superbly and sensitively translated by Ahdaf Soueif, and is the most eloquent statement in English of what it is like to be a Palestinian today.

As he crosses the River Jordan, he wonders what his status is: "A visitor? A refugee? A citizen? A guest? I do not know." Before June 1967, no one had disputed his right to Ramallah. But "now I pass from my exile to their . . . homeland? My homeland? The West Bank and Gaza? The Occupied Territories? The Areas? Judea and Samaria? The Autonomous Government? Israel? Palestine? Is there any other country in the world that so perplexes you with its names? Last time I was clear and things were clear. Now I am ambiguous and vague.

Everything is ambiguous and vague."

Barghouti describes the daily reality of the military occupation of the West Bank. It has meant the destruction of a community, a deliberate and sustained psychological humiliation of a people. "Occupation prevents you from managing your affairs in your own way. It interferes in every aspect of life and of death; it interferes with longing and anger and desire and walking in the street. It interferes with going anywhere and coming back, with going to market, the emergency hospital, the beach, the bedroom, or a distant capital."

Families are broken up, so that reunions take place not at home but in a foreign hotel. Roads to towns under the Palestinian Authority from Jordan are designed to prevent visiting Palestinians even glimpsing Jerusalem. Security is given as the reason for forbidding Palestinians to build. Land is taken for security reasons, and illegal Israeli settlements are constructed, thereby extending security needs. Israel controls water supply, and the needs of the settlements are adequately met. There is less green in the areas under Palestinian control.

Barghouti's account is controlled, reflective, factual, unemotional, eloquent.

He explains Palestinian bitterness, but shows little himself. The Arabic original (published in 1997) won the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Prize. The gap between public rhetoric and Barghouti's personal restraint was noteworthy in Arabic; translation cannot transfer the political and cultural context of the book's initial reception. The American University in Cairo Press have a poor record in distributing their excellent productions in Britain. This is a pity, for no other book so well explains the background to recent events in Palestine/Israel.