Palestinian poet to talk exile

The Palestinian poet and author, Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah has just been translated into Danish, and for this occasion he is visiting the University of Copenhagen

by Sebastian Zieler

Mourid Barghouti’s autobiography, I Saw Ramallah, won the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal. To promote its Danish release, the Palestinian poet is speaking at the University of Copenhagen at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Religious Studies (ToRS).

Exiled from his homeland in 1967’s Six-Day War, Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years feeling homeless and uprooted. Upon his return in 1996, crossing the very same bridge he walked to leave, he finds himself unable to recognize the city he was forced to leave behind, instead discovering new forms of displacement.

»It is enough for a person to go through the first experience of uprooting, to become uprooted forever,« he writes.

Sheds light on the exiled

»One of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement that we now have,« said the Palestinian Professor of Literature, Edward Said of I Saw Ramallah.

Mourid Barghouti, will be speaking about his autobiography at 16:15 Thursday 22 October at ToRS. He is doing a total of three lectures while in Copenhagen:

Thurdsay 22 October at 16.15: ToRS, University of Copenhagen, Snorresgade 17, 2300 Kbh. S.

Friday 23 October at 19.00: Dansk Forfatterforening, Strandgade 6, 1401 Kbh. K

Saturday 24 October at 18:00: Tranquebar, Borgergade 14, 1300 Kbh. K (in Arabic only)

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