I Saw Ramallah Analysis

Introduction
The novel as well as the short story proclaimed a literature of the oppressed that extended hope to those who have none. This can be seen in three key dimensions of the Palestinian novel. First, there is a beautification of the lost homeland of Palestine. Palestine is portrayed in literature as a paradise on earth. There is always a sense of nostalgia and belonging to the homeland. For example, the words of Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) express nostalgia for a past that every Palestinian has experienced. In the wake of the events that happened in 1948, Al-Nakbah emerged in Palestinian literature as a concept that signifies an unbridgeable break between the past and the present. The Palestinians’ loss of the homeland becomes the loss of paradise.
The second dimension emerges from the first one. It is about opening up to a future that is the very image of the past. In other words, it draws upon the image of Palestine before the Zionist project and all struggles as a result of occupation; the image of the original blessed Palestine and the sanctified land. It is an image of recalling the past in an attempt to revive what was destroyed in

I Saw Ramallah is about an experience of exile but it sheds light on the harsh living conditions of Palestine and Palestinian creativities. What is significant about Al Barghouti’s work is that it has offered an insight into the situation of Palestinians inside and outside Palestine. Al- Barghouti is one of those who have been displaced. The memoir is an account of the writer’s return to his hometown in the West Bank after thirty years of exile abroad. The Egyptian novelist, Ahdaf Soueif, translated the book into English. Edward Said wrote a foreword for this literary work rating it as one of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement that we now have (Said,