I saw Ramallah

I Saw Ramallah, a book that won the Naguib Mahfouz Award for Literary Creativity (1997). Is it Ramallah, the secret of achieved creativity!! Or is it the thirty years of exile that ignited in the heart nostalgia and longing for the residents of Ramallah!! Or is it the forbidden homeland awaited on the outskirts of the crossing bridge... The bridge of return that dwells in the memory of Murid Al-Barghouti with the creaking of a piece of wood, with its narrow area and short length. It is that short bridge through which memory walked to that vast horizon saturated with the scent of family and full of old images that live in the conscience.

Murid Al-Barghouti won the prize for crossing that small wooden bridge, as if by crossing it he was able to appear in front of his days, and make his days appear before him, touching details of them for no reason, neglecting other details of them for no reason, babbling to himself an entire life, on the day of his return, and those around him think that he crossed the bridge in silence He was forbidden to him after thirty years, and suddenly he bent down to collect his fragments, as he gathered the two sides of his coat together on a day of frost and eagerness. Or as a student collects his leaves scattered by the field air while returning from afar.

And on his bed that night, the night of return, to gather the days and nights of laughter, of anger, of tears, of absurdity, and of marble tombstones that one life is not enough for him to visit them all, in order to offer silence and respect, and in the midst of all that the soul is pale, and the soul is withered And a question jumps, what robs the soul of its colors and the soul of its melodies?!! And what, other than the bombing of the invaders, hit the bridge? Murid Al-Barghouti did all this to tell in his book the journey of the torment of Palestine through a wonderful poetic storytelling style that embodied his beautiful, tortured human honesty.