The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

by Hisham Matar

I continue, after twenty-five years, to endure my father’s “unknown death and silence.” I envy the finality of funerals. I covet the certainty. How it must be to wrap one’s hands around the bones, to choose how to place them, to be able to pat the patch of earth and sing a prayer.

There is a moment when you realize that you and your parent are not the same person, and it usually occurs when you are both consumed by a similar passion.