The path from the tombs back toward the village felt unfamiliar, though I had walked it countless times in another life. The earth beneath my feet was softer than I remembered and the scent of wet soil still lingered from the storm. Each step made my mind clearer, as if the rain that soaked the land had also washed something inside me. The wool cloak the villagers gave me clung to my skin. It felt strange to be covered after so long. Warm. Human. Real.

 

I listened to the world around me with ears newly born. I heard birds calling from olive trees and goats bleating somewhere beyond the ridge. The wind did not howl with voices. It did not twist or curl into shapes that tormented me. It was just wind. Pure. Clean. I breathed deeply and it did not hurt.

 

I should have felt joy rising inside me, but instead I felt fear. A quiet, trembling fear that tightened my chest the closer I came to the familiar roads. Not fear of demons. Not fear of the tombs. This time it was fear of faces. Fear of memories. Fear of the people who once knew me as Elihu the husband, brother, son, neighbor, friend. I wondered what remained in their minds. Did they remember the man I was, or only the creature who howled among the dead?

 

The village grew larger ahead of me. Smoke curled from cooking fires. Children’s laughter danced through the air like sparks. My feet slowed. I suddenly felt the weight of years I could not count. My heart began to hammer as loudly as the stones I used to strike against the tomb walls.

 

Then I saw a boy.

 

He stood at the edge of the path with wide eyes and a clay jar in his hands. For a moment I thought he would run, but he didn’t. He only stared. I froze. My throat tightened. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came. The boy took a cautious step toward me, then another. His eyes narrowed as if searching my face for something he had lost long ago.

 

I knew him.

 

His name rose within me like a soft echo. My nephew. My brother Medad’s son. I remembered lifting him into the air when he was just a toddler, his laughter light as a sparrow’s wings. Now he was taller, older, carrying the beginnings of manhood in his shoulders.

 

He whispered my name. Not the name the demons used. Not the name the villagers screamed in fear. My real name. Elihu. The one buried beneath tomb dust and madness.

 

My knees almost gave way.

 

He turned and shouted toward the village. I panicked at first, thinking he was calling for help or warning them I had returned. But his voice was full of something I had not heard in years. Hope. He called for his father. For Medad.

 

My brother’s footsteps pounded against the packed earth long before I saw him. When he appeared, breathless and wild-eyed, his face twisted with disbelief. He stopped a few paces away from me. His chest heaved. His eyes scanned my face like a man searching through ruins for something precious.

 

I tried to speak. My lips trembled. The words tangled inside me.

 

He stepped closer.

 

I shook my head, stepping back. I didn’t want him to see the scars. The wounds. The haunted memories still crawling through the edges of my mind. I didn’t want him to smell the tombs on me. But he came forward anyway until he stood so close I could feel the warmth of his breath.

 

He touched my cheek.

 

His hand trembled as if touching a ghost.

 

Then he pulled me into his arms.

 

I felt something inside me break. Not like the breaking that happened when my wife died, or the breaking that welcomed the demons. This was different. This was the breaking of chains that had lingered even after their masters fled. I buried my face in his shoulder and I wept. Years of grief poured out in a torrent I could not contain. My brother held me and wept too.

 

Voices rose around us as villagers gathered. Some gasped. Some whispered prayers. Some stepped back in fear, but none approached. Not yet. They circled like people witnessing a miracle they were not sure they had permission to touch.

 

My brother stepped away only long enough to wipe his face. Then he took my hand. Not to restrain me. Not to lead me away from danger. But to bring me home.

 

The door of our family house creaked open. The scent of cooked lentils and baked bread drifted out. It hit me harder than any demon ever had. Memories flooded my mind like the waters of the Yarmuk, rolling thick and unstoppable. Laughter. Warm nights. My wife’s voice humming as she ground grain by the hearth. My mother’s hands shaping dough. My father’s low chants of thanksgiving after harvest.

 

My brother squeezed my hand gently. Let’s go inside.

 

I stepped across the threshold.

 

The moment my foot touched the floor, something shifted inside me. It was as if the house itself recognized me. As if the walls remembered the sound of my footsteps. As if the air carried echoes of who I used to be. My brother guided me to a mat and I lowered myself slowly, my body remembering softness again after years of stone.

 

Then my eyes landed on the small clay jar on the shelf. My wife’s jar. The one she used for oil when she anointed her hair. The painted line around its middle was faded, chipped in one place. I reached toward it with trembling fingers. My heart raced with a mixture of pain and tenderness. I touched it lightly. It was cool beneath my fingertips.

 

My brother watched me with quiet understanding. He did not rush me. He did not ask questions. He simply sat beside me.

 

The voices were gone but my mind still felt raw, like new skin not yet hardened. Every sound, every scent, every memory came with sharp clarity. The grief of my wife’s death settled upon me again, no longer twisted by demonic tongues but pure and aching.

 

I whispered ahavah into the stillness.

 

I felt no condemning voice reply. Only silence. Holy silence.

 

My brother placed his hand over mine. His voice was soft when he spoke. You are home now.

 

Something warm moved through me, slow and gentle. And in that moment I understood something I had not seen until then. Restoration is not only healing. It is God returning a man to the place he abandoned. It is the mercy of being re-planted where your roots were torn out. It is the kindness of being given back the life you thought your sin had forfeited forever. I realized then why Jesus sent me home and not with Him. The dead had claimed me for too long. Only the living could complete my resurrection.

 

The night grew deep. The oil lamp flickered. My brother lay down nearby, keeping watch over me like he used to when we were boys. I listened to his breathing until sleep slowly embraced me for the first time in years without terror clutching my mind.

 

And as I drifted, I felt one truth settle inside me with the certainty of dawn.

 

I was alive.

And tomorrow, I would speak of the One who crossed a storm just to bring me home.