This article examines Mourid Barghouti’s appropriation of
Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1603) in his memoir I Saw Ramalla
(1997), which documents his temporary return to Palestine after
30 years of exile and his criticism of the delusional life of
Palestinians post-Oslo accords which, as he argues, undermined
the rights of Palestinians for autonomy, sovereignty and self-
determination. Barghouti associates post-Oslo Palestinians with
the fictional figure of Hamlet who is unpacking his heart with
words rather than taking actions against Claudius. According to
Barghouti, Hamlet’s merry jests and laughter have striking
similarities with many post-Oslo Palestinians who romanticize
their injuries, turning their defeat into victory and their tragedy
into comedy. Furthermore, Barghouti associates his feeling of
displacement and internal exile with that of Hamlet who is
displaced in his homeland, Denmark. Both Hamlet and
Barghouti retreat behind the wall of silence and turn their exile
and displacement into a subjective space of creativity and
critical consciousness. We argue that Barghouti writes the
Palestinian present through the classic, and we illustrate that
Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah has rendered the personal and
national larger and global, permitting the specific and
mutlifacious Palestinian oppression to be understood on
grander scales.Thus, I Saw Ramallah suggests broad ethical
messages, gerneralizing the Palestinian struggle to the level of
significant moral questions of oppression, injustice and valour.

Title

Anglia

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter

Publisher Country

Germany

Indexing

Thomson Reuters

Impact Factor

0.25

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

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Year

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Pages

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