Awaited Return

It took them 15 hours… 15 hours accompanied with bombs and missile strikes, from the South of Tyre to Joun, a village in the mountains of Lebanon. My family didn’t think that the heavy bombing would last for 2 continuous months… They left unprepared for what’s to come.

To weigh all those images in mind, sounds repeating themselves like a record stuck on repeat, our bodies hold the memory. They witness all of who we were, are and will become.

You’ve uprooted us from our land, abused time and reframed our understanding of the South. Certain roads that used to take thirty minutes would now take 2 hours. Disfigured buildings standstill as a historical landmark of the war that’s still on-going.

The wait back home was long, the line of cars felt never ending and time felt like it’s no longer ours… Even the road and the sky, we’re no longer in control… We’ve been robbed.

The road has accompanied us with the blasting victorious sounds of the awaited return, merged with the chaos of what’s to come, greeting us at the end of the road with a deafening silence.

Yet we chose to stay, to be present, to sleep the night and wake up the next day to continue what the battle couldn’t finish.

We hold a different understanding of the land now, acknowledging what’s been erased and keeping in mind the memories engraved in our collective memory. We make life out of a landscape suspended in time, one with an uncertain horizon under the active warzone proclaimed as “Ceasefire”.

The war has taken a toll on us, and we’re just passive objects to you. We witness our own defeat day by day. What’s a memory if it shall not transform into a different essence? A state that would linger and travel through sound, images and carry a different meaning to each eye witness? I’ve carried your weight long enough, these rocks that are weighing me down shall no longer prosper.

I choose to remember and that memory will wear a different form once it’s free, it shall prosper and ignite into a thousand splendid suns that have woven through the echo of the years that have haunted me for so long.

Resistance, whether it’s in small gatherings, bringing back the Thursday market (Souk AL-Khamis), preserving what we still have, rebuilding what we can, showing up at the cemeteries and waiting for those who didn’t show up yet… That is power.

Lama Taleb is an intersectional feminist from Sour, Lebanon. She is grappling with the complexities of writing, and reclaims the title of scribbler for herself. Lama is a wanderer who navigates across the self and the vast world we live in.

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rewave press | est. 2025

by Lama Taleb

peer reviewed by ava clare ng

Index

Lama Taleb is an intersectional feminist from Sour, Lebanon. She is grappling with the complexities of writing, and reclaims the title of scribbler for herself. Lama is a wanderer who navigates across the self and the vast world we live in.

NextTop

by Lama Taleb

peer reviewed by ava clare ng

Index

Lama Taleb is an intersectional feminist from Sour, Lebanon. She is grappling with the complexities of writing, and reclaims the title of scribbler for herself. Lama is a wanderer who navigates across the self and the vast world we live in. NextTop

Lama Taleb is an intersectional feminist from Sour, Lebanon. She is grappling with the complexities of writing, and reclaims the title of scribbler for herself. Lama is a wanderer who navigates across the self and the vast world we live in.

NextTop