I Saw Ramallah is the personal memoir of Mourid Barghouti. Attending university in Cairo when the Six Day War between Palestine and Israel began, he was not allowed to return to his homeland, Palestine, for thirty years. During this time he traveled the world, constantly looking for a place to remain where he felt accepted and comfortable, but no place held the safety of home for him. By the time he finally returns to his hometown, Ramallah, the war has transformed the place. The mental image which Barghouti had cherished for years is no longer sufficient. Throttled by the realization of impermanence, he has no option but to reconcile the memories with this new world and to concede that home is an amalgamation of changes which can never be preserved physically.
This memoir is heartbreaking and tumultuous and relentlessly realistic. In his writing, Barghouti has made an attempt to clear his own head. The lesson which his exile from his homeland imparted to him is weighty enough to demand sharing with the world. In so doing Barghouti also finds release from the aching desire for home which he carried with him for so long. He is able to tell in detail why his native Palestine is so beautiful and how the people are so dear. In all his travels, even his return home, Barghouti is forced to acknowledge that people are everywhere similar and paradoxically nuanced. Although he sought the fulfillment of one childhood image, he found a multiplicity of alternate childhoods and realized that every one was home by nature of its very existence.
