In “Returning to Haifa,” Ghassan Kanafani portrays the new consciousness that began to take shape after the 1967 defeat. It is a self-reckoning through a reexamination of the meaning of return and the concept of homeland. Saeed S., returning to the city where he left his child behind, comes to realize that “in the end, a human being is a cause,” and that Palestine is not the recovery of memories, but the making of the future.