The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

by Hisham Matar

She measured the lux level in order to determine how long the shutter would need to remain open.

“My brother.” “How old is he?” “Twenty-five. He was arrested at a demonstration on the 25th of March 2011.”

“Many years ago. On the 12th of March 1990.”

A few months after this photograph was taken, Uncle Hmad and Ali were arrested. I looked at the photograph several times during their twenty-one years of incarceration:

they were told that their release was contingent on one final detail: “Signing a formal apology for having ever opposed the Great Leader.”

Seif had already prepared it.

Is there an achievement greater than surviving suffering?

“I told him, ‘Listen, I would rather speak words that would cut off my head than those that would lower it.’