The unknown exile
When Mourid goes off to university, he expects to visit often and then to return to live among his family and community. However, fate held a twist for him that he did not expect; when he left, warfare ravaged the town and the government refused him re-entry into his own homelands. He became and exile without knowing it, and when he discovers it, he could never have guessed the exile would last three entire decades.
The irony of warfare
War is ironic essentially, because no one wants it, and yet, it happens all the time. But there it is more properly ironic in dramatic irony, because Mourid doesn't even know what's going on back home. He hears about the war but he's all the way in Cairo. From Egypt, the whole of the Six-Day War is veiled from him by distance, and when he tries to go home to see the damage done, to see who survived in his family, the government will not let him in. He is unable to see the truth of the Six-Day War for an ironically long time—30 years.
The irony of home and exile
For Mourid, his home is no longer an option, but strangely enough, that's kind of symbolic because his home isn't the same for the people who live there either. In either case, his new home is his exile. What started as a four year campaign has become a thirty year exile from his homeland by the time he finally is allowed to return. There is nothing left of what he used to know, because time has done so much. When he returns, the town is still in ruins from the war thirty years prior.
The relative stories
Mourid's story is fairly brutal, one might probably agree, but it's nothing compared to some of the stories he hears about his cousins and siblings. Some of them were at school when the war broke out, like Adli who is killed while at school when Israeli soldiers invade their town and start killing innocent citizens. The stories show the absolute horror of the Six-Day War, and the irony of their stories is that the Israeli army killed innocent citizens even children.
The irony of return
When he finally does return, Mourid's experience is riddled with irony. For one thing, after thirty years, he began to wonder if he would ever get to see his homelands. Another irony is the tone of the experience. He isn't going home to celebrate something, but to finally join in mourning the war that happened thirty years earlier. The town is kind of the same as he remembers, except that it is still completely destroyed by war. Many of the buildings are still destroyed. Time has not brought as much healing as he had hoped.
