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Barghouti, Mourid. I Saw Ramallah (2003). 892.786 This memoir and winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for literature from the American University in Cairo was written by Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti. Published in Arabic in 1997, the English translation by Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif (In the Eye of the Sun and Map of Love) appeared in 2000. It reads like a long and eloquent letter home. I Saw Ramallah is one of those incredibly important books like Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi) and Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde (Joe Sacco). Each takes place in a war-torn country, or occupied territory as the case may be, but they aren't abstract political writings. And unlike the average news story, these books don't fail to paint a vivid picture of the daily life of a select number of actual human beings leading their day-to-day lives in violent and complicated surroundings. As the book’s forward by the recently deceased author, political activist, and Palestinian Edward W. Said states: “Necessarily, there is a good deal of politics in Barghouti’s book, but none of it is either abstract or ideologically driven: whatever comes up about politics arises from the lived circumstances of Palestinian life…” Or as Barghouti himself puts it: “Politics is the family at breakfast. Who is there and who is absent and why… Staying away from politics is also politics. Politics is nothing and it is everything.” In 1967, when war broke out, Mourid Barghouti was in Cairo taking a Latin exam. He, like many young Palestinians studying abroad, was forbidden to return. I Saw Ramallah is the story of Mourid Barghouti's return to Palestine after thirty years and the time he spent displaced. During those years he spent varying amounts of time in furnished apartments in locales as disparate as Egypt, the United States, communist Hungary and Kuwait. Seventeen of those years were spent separated from his wife and child, seeing them only twice a year. This detailed memoir describes the exile of one naziheen (displaced one) and the lives with which his is intertwined. It’s a story of extravagant inconvenience, as in the case of the intricate bureaucracy one must pass through in order to cross into Palestine, the required shuffle between the official desks of the Israeli and Palestinian police officers in the small office on the border, and the piles of paperwork needed to prove one’s citizenship in a ‘country’ that doesn’t officially exist. This is a wide ranging study of loss, from the overpowering and sudden like the life of one’s brother, to the subtle and persistent like the olive oil one used to enjoy from one’s own backyard. "Displacement is like death. One thinks it happens only to other people. From the summer of '67 I became that displaced stranger whom I had always thought was someone else." There is no shortage of "other people" in the world, but lengthy intimate letters from them are a bit more rare, and you shouldn't leave this one unopened. --Sara Pete
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