We went up to my hometown yesterday. I wanted to visit the different spots my dad liked to visit – a pilgrimage, of sorts. He didn’t have the strength to take us around the usual places last year, but I’m glad that our last and only excursion together before he lost all capacity to move was back to the land of our fathers. A strange land with surrealist characteristics, but the only place on God’s black and red earth that will never call me a stranger and always welcome me home.
I joke about how I came back to bring Lebanon a president; I guess that’s my American side coming out.
We came up to my hometown as the whole country was abuzz with the fast-moving fallout of recent events in our geopolitical neck of the woods. With the blink of an eye, the impasse of 2+ years was crossed. Loyalties shift, tables turn. Everything is different, everything is exactly the same.
I thought this kid was the perfect icon for this crazy time; he’s playing beside the church where my father’s funeral took place.
It took me a very long time to understand why it was so hard to connect with my father in the final months of his life. At first, that really hurt; I wanted something that he didn’t seem able to provide. And then I started fearing how I was mirroring the same; two men of this cursed mountain incapable of affection. I agonized about how to be his son. And I soon realized that he also was unsure about how to be my father. What he understood was fortitude and he played the role until the very end. Only now do I fully understand that this is how he wanted to be remembered. This is how the son honors the father; to defy death, to hold on to his memory immortal.
It was very healing to hear about the terrible days he lived so tenderly with mom. He held on to life way past what was medically conceivable. My mother documented these days, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at the images. I thought I was cowardly, but only now, sitting here on the very bed he took his last breaths in, do I truly know that this is what he always wanted. The spouse shares in vulnerability; that’s his final embrace of marital intimacy. But the father never falters. The father never dies.
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Nothing captures the antinomies of “home” more than what happened within minutes of our arrival at the town square. I was taking photos when a municipal cop pulled up in an official car and asked, with that traditional twang of suspicion: “how can I help you?”
“Hinneh wled el day3a,” my brother-in-law offered, before I said anything stupid: “They’re from around here.” So, I introduced “myself” as a branch of my family, to which the cop responded by correctly noting the location of our old house, then introduced “myself” as the son of my father, who recently passed away (“3atak 3omro”).
The cop listened thoughtfully then said something that cracks me up every time I remember it: “mmm your family – you guys study a lot, right?” I laughed and said, yeah, I guess so, we read a lot of books. I asked if he had my uncle in mind and he started extracting old memories of his childhood when some bigshot of ours came into town with a U.S. embassy escort, and I wondered if that was cousin Abdo, who was a professor in Albany, but his memories were muddled up, saying that he was someone who worked at NASA. That was my uncle, but he would not have had a U.S. embassy motorcade; his conspiratorial anti-imperialism is pathological.
But he did recall someone who had a computer (probably the first in town), and I laughed again: “yup, that was my uncle.” He said he’d watch him dinking around on that old thing and I said: “but he didn’t let you touch anything, right?” And he laughed too, then bid us a good day.
Our main reason to be up here was, of course, to visit my father’s grave. This visit was perfectly circular; the last time I was here, my father led the way. He walked down the windy path to our ancestral church, the crunch of acorns beneath his feet punctuating his tired gait. And this time, I walked down first. The same crunch punctuated my sighs.
I had a film camera with me as well; with that, I took photos where I remembered seeing him last. I didn’t have to consult the posts I made last year to remember where he’d been; the place doesn’t change – only the people do.
That was the very last trip we took together. It’s hard not to imagine this as my final resting place too.
My sister and I had to climb over a fence to get to our columbarium. I’d never seen that gate locked before. It wasn’t locked last year. I didn’t think much of it at the time; that was just another hurdle to overcome after having come all this way. But at this moment, I’m sensing a deeper symbology. We belong with the living. Now’s not the time to dwell on rest.
It wasn’t all about monuments and memorials; much of the remembering was subtle. My sister joked about how I seem to walk like dad now, with my hands clasped behind my back; I said that’s what happens when we age; we conform to the same ideal type.
The landscape is full of memories. This electrical pole was a landmark he would often point out to us; it’s where he’d remember snagging and tearing a brand-new pair of trousers as a child the very first time he wore them. He never forgot how bad he felt; that’s the trauma of growing up poor. And now we remember that too.
The place never changes, but the people definitely do. On our way up, I was saying how I don’t see myself coming back here often; but we’re already talking about our next visit, to have the most decadent knefeh you’d ever try. I barely know anyone in this town; everything about this place was filtered through my dad. But it’s where I belong. We come and go; home is always here.