My Friends

by Hisham Matar

“Soon you will be home,” Mother would say. She said it nearly every time we spoke, and each time I said yes I believed I meant it—and not just because I did not know how else to answer or how to account for the fact that, though Benghazi was the one place I longed for the most, it was also the place I most feared to return to. The life I have made for myself here is held together by a delicate balance. I must hold on to it with both hands. It is the only life I have now. I would have to abandon it to go back, and, although I wish to abandon it, I fear I might not be able to reconstitute a new life, even if that would be in the folds of the old one. It is a myth that you can return, and a myth also that being uprooted once makes you better at doing it again.

what I want to return to I cannot return to because the place and I have changed and what I have built here might be feeble and meek, but it took everything I had and I fear if I leave I will not have the will to return and then I will be lost again and I have been lost before and will do everything not to be that again and that I do not know if it is cowardly or courageous and I do not care and I have decided without deciding, because it is my only option, to keep to the days, to sleep when it is good for me to sleep and wake in good time to attend to my work and the people who depend on me.

it is not enough to vanquish your enemy. I know this now and I fear for tomorrow. But I also know that now the work begins.