In 2000 Mourid 
Barghouti published I Saw Ramallah, the acclaimed memoir that told of 
returning in 1996 to his Palestinian home for the first time since exile
 following the Six-Day War in 1967. I Was Born There, I Was Born Here 
takes up the story in 1998 when Barghouti returned to the Occupied 
Territories to introduce his Cairo-born son, Tamim, to his Palestinian 
family. Ironically, a few years later Tamim had himself been arrested 
for taking part in a demonstration against the impending Iraq War. He 
was held in the very same Cairo prison from which his father had been 
expelled from Egypt to begin a second exile in Budapest when Tamim was 
only a few months old. Ranging freely back and forth in time between the
 1990s and the present day, Barghouti weaves into his account of exile 
poignant evocations of Palestinian history and daily life - the pleasure
 of coffee arriving at just the right moment, the challenge of a car 
journey through the Occupied Territories, the meaning of home and the 
importance of being able to say, standing in a small village in 
Palestine, 'I was born here', rather than saying from exile, 'I was born
 there'. Full of life and humour in the face of a culture of death, I 
Was Born There, I Was Born Here is destined, like its predecessor, to 
become a classic.