The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

by Hisham Matar

“Your duty is not to doubt but to give. And don’t ask questions at the door.

Revolutions have their momentum, and once you join the current it is very difficult to escape the rapids. Revolutions are not solid gates through which nations pass but a force comparable to a storm that sweeps all before it.

“Nothing ever happens here. But when it does, it happens at the speed of lightning. You can change the world in a day. It might take forty-two years for that day to come, but when it does…”

Or is this what being home is like: home as a place from which the entire world is suddenly possible?

The journal’s motto was: “Education gains the nation its dignity, sovereignty and pride. Where knowledge spreads, prosperity, happiness and security prevail. Education is as necessary as water and oxygen.”

My father is both dead and alive. I do not have a grammar for him. He is in the past, present and future. Even if I had held his hand, and felt it slacken, as he exhaled his last breath, I would still, I believe, every time I refer to him, pause to search for the right tense. I suspect many men who have buried their fathers feel the same. I am no different. I live, as we all live, in the aftermath.