The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

by Hisham Matar

Once he saw me count change before handing it to a beggar. “Next time, don’t make a display of it,” he said. “Give as if you were taking.” It took me a long time to understand this. If we passed laborers or street-sweepers eating their lunch and they invited us to join them, which was the custom—meaning they never expected you to actually join them—Father would sit in his fine clothes on the ground amongst the men and, if I was not as quick as he was, he would say, “Come, an honest meal feeds a hundred.” He would take a bite or two, then conduct his magic trick, sliding bank notes beneath the plate mid-sentence. He would look at the time and say, “Men, you are excellent, thank you.” His voice, which was always gentle, would rise if he learnt that one of the servants had turned away a needy person or shooed off a cat. The simple rule was never to refuse any one or thing in need. “It’s not your job to read their hearts,” he once told me after I claimed, with shameful certainty, that begging was a profession. “Your duty is not to doubt but to give. And don’t ask questions at the door. Allow them only to tell you what they came for after they’ve had tea and something to eat.” The word got around. Our doorbell would ring two or three times a day. Most people needed money for food or school or medicine. Some wanted us to mediate in a dispute, to return to them a piece of property—a wagon, a bicycle, a basket—that someone had confiscated after an argument.