Torture changes a person, entirely. The recent example out of Gaza was of Muhammed Bhar, aged 24, who had Down syndrome and autism. Attacked by the Israeli Defence Forces, he finally spoke for the first time in his life. He uttered the words “Khalas ya habibi [enough, my friend].” The boy was attacked by a dog unleashed by the Israeli Forces. He was torn apart and bled to death.

A similar theme is followed by Carol Mansour in the documentary narrating the moment when her mother left her house in Jaffa for two weeks, never to return. Hopeful, yet finally letting her famous resilience die as her Alzheimer took over and all that was left was memories of her home etched in a spiral in her mind.

Carol Mansour’s emotional documentary, Aida Returns, follows her efforts to achieve her mother Aida Abboud’s dying request of returning to her ancestral home in Jaffa, Palestine. Aida was forced to leave Jaffa in 1948 and never returned in her lifetime. The video depicts her final days in Canada, suffering from severe Alzheimer’s yet clearly remembering her home.

Aida once thought she’d return. She was one of the millions who thought they’d return to their homes one day. Palestinians, for generations, have hung the keys to their front doors around their necks. They have hoped, against hope, to return to their roots. Hoped even when their land kept shrinking to make space for a country called Israel. Tortured, abused and executed, they still want to go back to the place that holds memories of their childhood.

“When I think about it, I wonder why my parents wanted to be cremated because it is bizarre and uncommon. But I would say it was probably because they did not have a home they wanted to be buried in.”

“When I think about it, I wonder why my parents wanted to be cremated; it is bizarre and uncommon. I would say it was probably because they did not have a home they wanted to be buried in.”

Abboud reminisced about her early days in Jaffa from her hospital bed while Mansour shot the documentary. Despite being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she frequently expressed her wish to return to Jaffa. Following her death in 2015, her family chose for her corpse to be cremated, which is unusual in Palestine.

Carol, Aida’s daughter, meets some strangers and friends in Beirut willing to take her mother’s ashes to where her mother’s heart belonged. Aida’s daughter guides her friends and loved ones who are clutching Abboud’s ashes. They are on a mission to go back to Palestine. They are on their way to Jaffa on the northwestern shore, which is south of Tel Aviv. Their aim is to give Abboud the homecoming she had always desired: dispersing her remains along the sea and in her home’s garden. The mission to spread the ashes is a reminder of the brutal nature of their Israeli neighbours who do not let Palestinians rest in peace.

The documentary film is an ode to the bond shared by mothers and daughters as it navigates through a personal yet universal story of grief, trauma, yearning and love. 

The documentary was shot using professional cameras and mobile phones. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like the viewer is watching a movie. Rather, it is as if they have been granted access to Mansour’s personal records, which exist to ensure that she never forgets her mother’s stories or how Abboud’s voice sounded when she said she loves her.

Every story out of Palestine is laced in intricate emotions and wrapped in trauma. The trauma of people trying to return to their home resulted in another assault on Gaza that erased everything they’d built in that prion of theirs. Displaced once again, the horrors of Gazans are unmatched. The memories from the previous genocides in Palestine are still raw in the mind of the natives.

The documentary is an ode to the bond shared by mothers and daughters. It navigates through a personal, yet universal, story of grief, trauma, yearning and love. In spite of Mansour filming on phone, her filmmaking is personal and poignant and draws the viewer in.

The writer is an undergraduate student of psychology at FC College, Lahore