The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

by Hisham Matar

“The cruelty of this place far exceeds all of what we have read of the fortress prison of Bastille. The cruelty is in everything, but I remain stronger than their tactics of oppression….My forehead does not know how to bow.” In another letter, there is this sentence: “At times a whole year will pass by without seeing the sun or being let out of this cell.”

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.

He taught my brother and me to never accept financial assistance from anyone, especially governments, and when giving to give so discreetly that your “left hand does not know what the right hand has done.”

Without knowing anything about the old man or why Hisham wanted me to call him, I looked at my watch until exactly two minutes had passed, then dialed the number. An old voice answered straight away. “Welcome, my son,” he said. He sounded like he was unaccustomed to speaking on the telephone. “Hisham asked me to call,” I said. “We are friends.” “But what can you do? No one can do anything.” “What happened?” I asked. “I watched them from my window. They came with bulldozers and dug up the graves, one after the other. They burnt the corpses, and now everyone is afraid to touch them.” Then he said, “But, thanks be to God, my son is here.” “He’s safe?” I asked. “Yes. He’s in his room. The air conditioner has been on the whole time.” Then after a pause he added, “But it’s been three days now. I am doing my best but he’s beginning to smell. I must find a way to bury him soon.”

“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.”

I think every child is born with a tiny device implanted in their chest that signals the moment their mother is about to cry.

In death the hallmark fades, and not all the memorials in the world

When Qaddafi took my father, he placed me in a space not much bigger than the cell Father was in. I paced back and forth, anger in one direction, hatred in the other, until I could feel my insides grow small and hard. And, because I was young, and hatred and anger are a young man’s emotions, I tricked myself into thinking the transformation was good, that it was akin to progress, a sign of vigor and strength. That was how I spent most of my twenties, until, in the autumn of 2002, twelve years on from when I lost my father, I found myself standing at the edge of the Pont d’Arcole in Paris, staring into the green rushing waters below.

Uncle Mahmoud had told me how he had had everything done to him. “They beat me, deprived me of food and sleep, tied me down, spilled a bucketful of cockroaches on my chest. There is nothing they didn’t do. Nothing can happen to me now that can be worse than that time. And always, I managed it. I kept a place in my mind, where I was still able to love and forgive everyone,” he said, his eyes soft and lips smiling. “They never succeeded to take that from me.”