Some Returned… and the Rest Remained There

Some Returned… and the Rest Remained There

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It was a gray morning when we packed the few clothes we had into a single bag.
Two boys, a daughter… and a wife looking at me with eyes filled with trust and fear all at once.
We were not saying goodbye to the homeland; rather, we were leaving it in a silence resembling the creaking doors of abandoned houses.
Authority had turned into a whip, the homeland into a cage, and the very air into betrayal.
My son asked me:
“Papa… why aren’t we going back tomorrow?”
I did not answer.
But his mother took his hand and whispered:
“We will go back… but later.”
The years passed heavily… as though each month were a year.
We moved from country to country, carrying at every airport our papers, our passports, and our children's names, whose spelling began to shift as the nations changed.
Every exile was a place where one of my children grew up, and every house we lived in had a different flavor…
Yet no smell of bread resembled ours, and no taste of tea felt like our tea.
It was the year two thousand when everything changed.
In the second month, my lifelong companion passed away.
She left after a brief illness… as if she could no longer endure the distance, or as if she had seen the homeland in a dream and decided to precede us there.
She left me with six children:
Three were born among the alleys of our old city,
And three came at the edge of exiles,
Knowing the homeland only through faded photographs and their mother’s stories.
I became both father and mother—praying, weeping, and raising them.
I would lock the rooms at night, check on their breathing,
And every now and then, I would hold a piece of my wife’s memories, inhale her scent, and then place it back carefully so it wouldn't wear away.
We were living, yes, but without life.
We laughed sometimes, yes, but without soul.
We ate, dressed, and learned… but something within us was lost.
Years passed, faces changed, and the tyrant fell.
I felt that something was slowly drawing us back to the starting point.
People began to return, speaking of freedom, of rebuilding anew.
Yet I hesitated.
What was the point of returning?
Whom would I find?
The house we lived in was destroyed, the street had lost its landmarks and changed, the neighbors had departed,
And the wife who used to say, “We will sit here and grow old together,” was gone forever.
Yet something inside me kept insisting…
So I decided to return.
Return alone…?!
For the children now have their own lives, their own passports, and their own languages—some of them having forgotten their mother tongue.
I picture it and imagine:
The plane lands, I pass through the checkpoint, and the officer asks me:
“What is the reason for your visit?”
I will answer:
“I came to see a piece of my life.”
When I arrive at the neighborhood, I will find everything changed.
The road narrower, the houses in ruins, and the grocery store turned to rubble.
I will find none of the neighbors.
Yet that beautiful rock in front of our house will stand firm despite everything.
Will I find a door to open, even if broken wood?
There is a room of which nothing remains except the shadow of its walls.
And in the corner, over there, perhaps I will find a trace of us…
An old drawing on the wall, in large letters:
“Mama loves us.”
I will sit on the bare ground,
I will cry in silence, but I will say out loud:
“I have returned, mother of my children… I have returned, even if after all this time.”
I realized—and you had realized before me—that the homeland is not a house nor a street,
But rather what remains within us despite the loss.
And when the house is no longer as it was,
We are the ones who rebuild it with memories…

Faces That Crossed My Exile… and Never Left Me

I did not keep many photographs,
But I retained features…
An old man who taught me how to ask for things in a language I did not master.
He would smile as he wrote my name in his country’s language, then say to me:
“Here is your homeland where you were not born… but do not fear, good people are like mountains… time does not move them.”
A young man who came to me one night carrying a cooked dish and said with a smile:
“We missed our mothers' food.”
A woman who used to pass by us; we did not know her name,
But she would smile whenever she saw my children…
As if reassuring us without uttering a word.
A friend at the far ends of the earth,
Who used to speak to me in the mosque as though we had grown up together.
A neighbor who never asked me where I came from,
Instead, when I met him for the first time, he said to me:
“You are from here now; do not bow your head.”
All of these people…
I no longer see them,
Nor do I know their fates,
Yet they dwell within my chest…

And in the Heart… a Delayed Return

And I…
Am still preparing to travel,
Gathering what remains of me into a suitcase,
Practicing my greetings,
And trying to imagine the reunion.
Will those streets recognize me?
Will my sister recognize me when she sees me standing at the door?
Will I recognize myself… when I return?
I do not know…
Yet, on a coming morning,
I might knock on the door from which I once left,
Not as one returning…
But as one who never left.

📖 The Sister… Who Grew Up While I Was Away

By Saad El-Din Hadba
In my dream that night,
The road did not carry me to my childhood this time…
Rather, to hers.
To a sister I had left when she was ten years old,
With two braids swaying whenever she ran behind me, laughing or crying,
Never knowing that time would place more than two lifetimes between us.
I saw the house from afar,
Beautiful… elegant…
Its entrance adorned with endless colorful rose bushes,
And a trellis draped with ripe clusters of grapes,
As if the house had breathed from her patience,
And blossomed from her long silence.
The door was opened for me by…
A woman in her mid-fifties,
With features still holding something of the little girl I had left back there,
In the corners of memory.
She called me by my name, not my title, as she always used to do:
“Is it you?!”
Then she laughed, just as she used to when I succeeded in hiding from her for a long time.
In her eyes were two questions:
Where were you?
And why were you late all this time?
Yet she did not ask.
For a long embrace dispels the need for all words.
I entered the house,
And the moment I stepped inside, a strange warmth enveloped me,
As though I had only been away for days.
In the corner, little children were jumping about—
Her grandchildren, as she introduced them to me one by one,
Each with a story, a laugh, and features resembling hers.
As for her husband…
He was just as she had described him repeatedly in her letters that never arrived:
A man who worked tirelessly,
With a welcoming heart and boundless resolve,
And despite his undeniable aches, I heard not a single complaint from him.
We sat on the balcony,
Where the trellis stretched and cast its shade over the seats,
And the breeze passed by as though it had known us before.
She said:
“I used to plant these bushes in the hope that you would return, and see them blooming as I always wished…”
I said:
“I have returned… even if only in a dream.”
Then a beautiful silence fell,
As if the dream had decided to prolong its stay this time,
Or perhaps it feared waking me before I had my fill of her.
I sat looking at her,
Moving steadfastly,
Tending to her grandchildren, feeding them with her own hand,
Then laughing when they scattered around her like butterflies.
I understood that day…
That one who plants roses along the paths
Never loses the spirit of childhood,
Nor do the features of siblinghood fade from her… no matter how long the absence.
And before I woke,
She extended her hand, patted my shoulder,
And said in a voice soaked with emotion:
“Do not prolong your absence this time… even if it is in a dream.”
Then I opened my eyes…
And the scent of roses was still in my nostrils,
And her voice was still in my heart.

📖 The Cemetery… Where Stories Begin and End

By Saad El-Din Hadba
In my dream this time,
The path was not toward a house, a neighborhood, or an alleyway…
Rather, it was toward the silence,
Where no one waits,
And no one reproaches.
I found myself standing at the threshold of the old cemetery.
The same iron gate with its worn edges,
And the same tall trees that used to frighten us when we were young,
Now shaded me in solemn reverence.
I walked slowly between the graves.
Every stone carried a name I knew.
Every marble slab hid a heart I once loved.
Right here…
Rested my father.
As for my mother—
She who departed when I was only five years old,
And all that remained of her was a tender prayer and a faded picture—her grave was elsewhere.
I passed by a grave
Where it was written only by hand:
“Your prayers,”
And I knew it was the grave of someone who found no witness in this world… except Allah.
I sat near a grave that felt familiar,
I could no longer distinguish whose it was,
For everyone here had become part of the story.
I pulled out my small notebook,
And my pen that never leaves me, even in sleep,
And I began to write.
I wrote:
“I am the one who is still alive among you,
Visiting you every night in dreams,
And asking: Do you hear my longing for you?
Do you feel the weight of the loneliness you left upon my shoulders?”
Then I found myself in another scene,
As though the dream had shifted or expanded,
And there I was, sitting at a small table,
The notebook before me,
And the chapters scattering like autumn leaves.
I was writing like one gathering the pieces of himself,
Recording everything I lived in the exile of the soul—
Every door I knocked on,
And every face I bade farewell to, wishing I never had to part from.
Time was passing quickly,
As if I were writing before I woke up,
Or as if writing alone was equivalent to returning.
And before the last candle in the dream flickered out,
I heard a voice in the distance…
Perhaps it was the voice of my father, my sister, or my friend,
Saying to me:
“Write, and do not stop… for perhaps your voice will reach us.”
I awoke,
Only to find the notebook still on the table,
And the pen between my fingers.
But the page I was writing on… was blank.

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