The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

by Hisham Matar

This one could rob me of a skill that I have worked hard to cultivate: how to live away from places and people I love.

“knowing a book by heart is like carrying a house inside your chest.”

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.

the familiar scents in the air were like a blanket you were not aware you needed, but now that it has been placed on your shoulders you are grateful.