Two Years Later, I Came Back to You

By Fatima Haydar

Two year... Two years since we lost you, Sayyed.

I remember sitting down to write about your first anniversary and wondering how a year could possibly have passed.

Now, another year is gone.

And somehow, this one feels different.

Not because the loss has become easier.

But because so much has happened since the last time I wrote your name on an anniversary.

This year, Lebanon went through another war.

I spent four months displaced from home.

Four months of living with the question of when we would return, and what would still be waiting for us when we did.

We eventually came home.

But after a war, coming home is not quite the same as returning.

You recognize the streets, but you notice what is missing.

You recognize the places, but you remember what happened there.

You return to your own life and realize that somewhere along the way, it has changed.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I lost someone dear to me.

I had known loss before.

But knowing that someone you love has become part of the memories you will spend the rest of your life protecting is a different kind of pain.

People return to places that have been damaged, carrying memories of those who cannot return with them.

And this year, I was one of them.

I had stood at your shrine before.

But this year, I stood there differently.

Not only because it had become your final resting place, but because I had spent the months before it away from home, watching another chapter of Lebanon’s suffering unfold.

The man whose voice once filled Dahiyeh had become silent.

The country he spoke about so often had once again been pushed into war.

And those of us who lived through it were left to count what remained.

Homes.

Memories.

Photographs.

Names.

And the people who made it back.

That is the Lebanon I return to your shrine from.

A Lebanon where war is never only something reported on television.

It arrives at your door.

It empties neighborhoods.

It sends families away.

It leaves people waiting for news.

And sometimes, it takes someone you love.

There is also something unsettling about watching all of this unfold while political negotiations continue over the same land where people have been displaced and martyred.

The language of diplomacy can make war sound distant.

But there is nothing distant about it when you have packed your belongings because you no longer know whether your home is safe.

There is nothing abstract about it when someone leaves to defend southern Lebanon against the "Israeli" aggression and does not return.

That is the part of politics that never makes it into the meeting rooms.

The human part. 

The part that remains long after the statements are issued and the cameras disappear.

Perhaps this is why your shrine means something different to me now.

I don’t come only to remember the leader we lost two years ago.

I come as someone who has lived through another year of Lebanon’s uncertainty.

Someone who left home and came back.

Someone who lost someone dear.

Someone who has watched another generation learn what war takes from people.

And yet, despite everything, there is something strangely familiar about standing there.

The same Dahiyeh.

The same people.

The same black clothes.

The same prayers.

But none of us are exactly the same.

Two years have passed since your martyrdom.

A great deal has happened in those two years.

There was grief.

There was war.

There was displacement.

There was return.

There were funerals.

There were moments when it felt impossible to imagine what could come next.

And still, life continued.

Not because we forgot.

Perhaps because we didn’t.

I think that is what I understand differently now.

Loss does not always announce itself.

Sometimes it becomes part of ordinary life.

You hear a voice that reminds you of someone.

You pass a familiar street.

You remember a conversation.

You see a crowd gathered and suddenly think of someone who should be standing there.

And for a second, they are almost beside you again.

Then the moment passes.

But the memory stays.

Two years later, I still think of you that way.

Not only on September 27.

Not only when I visit your shrine.

But in the small moments when I remember what your presence once meant to so many people.

Last year, I wrote about 365 scars.

This year, I don’t want to count them.

Some things cannot be measured by numbers.

I only know that I am standing here again, two years later, after a year I never imagined I would have to live through.

And perhaps that is enough.

I came back.

To Dahiyeh.

To your shrine.

To a place that has witnessed so much loss and still receives people carrying their own stories.

I came back with memories of a war.

With the memory of someone I loved.

With four months of displacement behind me.

And with a heart that has learned that some absences never become ordinary.

Two years later, Sayyed, I still miss you.

But this year, I do not want to write only about what we lost.

I want to write about what remained.

The people.

The memories.

The places we returned to.

The names we still say.

And the quiet certainty that some lives continue to shape ours long after they have ended.

I came back to your shrine this year with more than I had the last time.

More memories.

More losses.

More questions.

But also more understanding.

Two years have passed.

And I am still here.

Still remembering.

Still writing.

And still grateful that, after everything this year took from us, I was able to come home and stand before you again.

Click here to read 365 Scars on My Heart: A Year Since the Martyrdom of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah