"I Saw Ramallah" is a book that won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal 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 longing and yearning for the people of Ramallah!! Or is it the forbidden homeland waiting on the outskirts of the crossing bridge... the Bridge of Return, that which resides in the memory of Mourid Barghouti with the creaking of wood, with its narrow space and short length. It is that short bridge that memory walked across to that wide horizon saturated with the scent of family and brimming with old images still residing in the conscience. Mourid Barghouti won the prize for crossing that small wooden bridge, as if by crossing it he was able to stand before his days, and made his days appear before him, touching on some details without reason, neglecting others without reason, chattering to himself for an entire lifetime. On the day of his return, those around him thought that he had silently crossed the bridge forbidden to him after thirty years, and suddenly he bent down to gather his scattered belongings, as one gathers the two sides of his coat together on a day of frost and eagerness. Or as a student gathers his papers that the wind of the field scattered as he returns from afar. And on his bed that night, the night of return - he gathered the days and nights of laughter, anger, tears, frivolity, and marble monuments that one lifetime would not be enough for him to visit all of them, in order to offer silence and respect. In the midst of all that, the spirit is pale, the soul is withered, and a question leaps up: What robs the soul of its colors and the soul of its melodies?!! And what, other than the bombardment of the invaders, struck the bridge? Mourid Barghouti gathered all that to narrate in this book the journey of Palestine’s suffering through a wonderful poetic narrative style, embodying his tortured and beautiful human honesty.