I Saw Ramallah
Mourid Barghouti
A poet crosses the Allenby Bridge home after thirty years of exile — the most beloved Palestinian memoir of return.
In 1996, after the Oslo Accords made it possible, the poet Mourid Barghouti returned to Ramallah for the first time since 1967, when — away at university in Cairo — he had been barred from coming home. I Saw Ramallah is the account of that crossing: the bridge, the changed town, the village of Deir Ghassanah, the dead buried in his absence, and the discovery that return does not end exile. “The stranger can never return to what he left,” he finds; displacement continues inside the homeland.
Part memoir, part prose poem, the book won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 1997 and was translated into English by Ahdaf Soueif with a foreword by Edward Said, who called it one of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement. It remains the essential literary testimony of the Palestinian diaspora.
About the author
Mourid Barghouti (1944–2021) was born in Deir Ghassanah near Ramallah. One of the leading Palestinian poets of his generation, he lived most of his life in exile, teaching in Cairo and Budapest, and published numerous collections and a second memoir, I Was Born There, I Was Born Here.
Details
- Published in Arabic as Ra’aytu Ram Allah, 1997
- English translation by Ahdaf Soueif; foreword by Edward W. Said
- Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature
Connected in the archive
26 connected records26 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 5 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Edward W. Saidإدوارد سعيد
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: - English translation by Ahdaf Soueif; foreword by Edward W. Said
- Mourid Barghoutiمريد البرغوثي
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: In 1996, after the Oslo Accords made it possible, the poet Mourid Barghouti returned to Ramallah for the first time since 1967, when — away at university in Cairo — he had been barred from coming home.
- Oslo Accords
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: In 1996, after the Oslo Accords made it possible, the poet Mourid Barghouti returned to Ramallah for the first time since 1967, when — away at university in Cairo — he had been barred from coming home.
- Ramallahرام الله
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: In 1996, after the Oslo Accords made it possible, the poet Mourid Barghouti returned to Ramallah for the first time since 1967, when — away at university in Cairo — he had been barred from coming home.
- The Oslo Accords
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: In 1996, after the Oslo Accords made it possible, the poet Mourid Barghouti returned to Ramallah for the first time since 1967, when — away at university in Cairo — he had been barred from coming home.
names this record — 1 record
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- The Barghouti familyالبرغوثي
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: …from Egypt in 1977, he spent long years of exile in Budapest as a PLO representative and first saw Ramallah again only in 1996. The memoir of that return, I Saw Ramallah (1997), won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature and, in Ahdaf Soueif's English translation with a foreword by Edward Said, made him the most widely read Palestinian prose writer of his…
on a related subject — 20 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Ibrahim Abu-Lughodإبراهيم أبو لغد
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "exile", "return".
- A Long Walk from Gaza
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "exile".
- A Mountainous Journey: A Poet's Autobiography
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "memoir".
- After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "exile".
- Edward Said: The Question of Palestine
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "exile".
- Elias Sanbarإلياس صنبر
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "exile".
- and 14 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“I Saw Ramallah.” Library, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/library/i-saw-ramallah/.- MLA
“I Saw Ramallah.” Library, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/library/i-saw-ramallah/. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-i-saw-ramallah, title = {I Saw Ramallah}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/library/i-saw-ramallah/}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }