Poet Mourid Barghouti’s beautiful and moving book, I saw Ramallah (Cairo/New York, 2001), is written in short, verse-length sentences. Is the brevity due to the influence of the author’s poetry style, that even in prose he thinks and phrases like a poet? Or to the nature of the subject, which prohibits fancy romantic adjectives, all deceptive, and intricate grammatical footwork, also mendacious and artificial? And yet everything he says alludes discreetly to infinitely complex matters that the simplicity of the diction allows the reader to guess or imagine as feelings.

It starts with the shocking contrast between the physicality of the land and what it has become in the heart. A loss and displacement, a humiliation, a constant distance from oneself. My first movement is to think of it as a most insightful commentary on the situation of the Babylonian exiles as sung in Psalm 137, including the rage at the end (both in Psalm 137 and in a few passages of Barghouti’s book). The Hebrew psalm floats in my head, and soon I can’t decide which way the references go: from Barghouti’s testimony to that older story of another dislocation in Babylon, or from the anguished psalm towards his situation and that of other Palestinians. It would be perverse to make the modern situation an illustration of the ancient text. Better say that Psalm 137 is apt commentary on the situation of Palestinian exiles and hope its last verse is fantasy.

He makes eloquent reflections on space and time, describing his birthplace, Dar Ra‘d, for instance, as not a place but a time. Page 13, an arresting passage on names and their impossible task:

And now I pass from my exile to their …. homeland? My homeland? The West Bank and Gaza? The Occupied Territories? The Areas? Judea and Samaria? The Autonomous Government? Israel? Palestine? Is there any other country in the world that so perplexes you with its names?