As seen in Chapter 4, Elie and Naji played with fire by joining leftist and rightist militias, respectively, and got burned, sustaining both physical and emotional injuries. The first-person narratives of family members – Osama and Ruba – carved out for these two young men a space in which to voice their anger, rebellion and political enthusiasm, as well as their eventual disillusionment and regret. Both were from poor families with no opportunity to leave the war zone and so fought for their visions, however skewed, of Lebanon-as-homeland. In addition to The Hakawati and A Girl Made of Dust's shared concern with the effects of militarisation on young men, a theme also highlighted in Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game, they featured another equally significant trait, namely dynamic family relations across generations (and, in The Hakawati, across distinct geographical and cultural spaces). Furthermore, it was the hovering presence of fathers in The Hakawati and A Girl Made of Dust which occasioned the narrative acts: Osama's ruminations and recollections were triggered by a visit to Lebanon to be with his dying father; Ruba's account was partly fuelled by her curiosity to unravel the secret of her father's emotional paralysis.