An emotional reflection written by Hussein Mughniyeh, the son of Hezbollah’s martyred military commander Hajj Imad on the 18th martyrdom anniversary.
There are lives that pass like footprints in dust, and there are lives that imprint themselves in color. You were the latter. A tapestry, slowly formed against the curve of my conical cornea, threaded not in silence but in saturation. I did not encounter you in the brightness of noon. I saw you in darkness only, in the dead of night when the world recedes into outline, and in the fragile seam of dawn when light hesitates before committing to the day. Yet even then, your open the gallery housed within your face.
A gallery no mortal hand could assemble. A gallery that could only be wrought by God.
To look at you was not merely to observe a man. It was to stand before composition. Color arranged not for spectacle, but for meaning. Each hue carried biography. Each shade carried burden.
Blue, the sky that held you without ceiling. You seemed always to exist beneath an expanse larger than circumstance, as if no roof could quite contain your intention. Blue, too, the hue of your arms as they encircled others without measure and without exception. There was no rationing of warmth. No hierarchy of embrace. Your compassion did not consult identity before it extended itself. It simply moved.
Blue was patience. Blue was breadth. Blue was the quiet authority of someone who understood that mercy requires stamina.
Green, the earth that fed upon your steps. Not in the sense of burial, but in the sense of grounding. You belonged to soil. There was something agricultural about your endurance, something seasonal about your strength. Green, the leaves that filtered light across your smile, softening its edges, making it less a weapon and more a shelter. Green, too, the long tenure of your skin beneath the patient branches that bore witness to you. You were watched, not by crowds alone, but by trees, by time, by the slow mechanics of growth.
Green was continuity. Green was witness. Green was the long work of becoming.
Orange was offering. Orange was resilience. Orange was warmth that did not require applause.
Purple, the flash of your hand as it descended in decisive command, then rose again in fluid streaks. Maestro. Painter. Writer. Architect of motion. You did not merely move through rooms; you conducted them. Purple held the tension between authority and artistry. Between discipline and imagination. When your hand cut the air, it did not do so to dominate but to orchestrate.
Purple was intellect. Purple was precision. Purple was the rare fusion of command and creativity.
And then there was White. The white of the garments you wore when I last saw you. Not ceremonial, not theatrical. Simply white. Clean. Undistracted. You were smiling. Holding a paper file to the unblinking eye of a lens, urging me gently to step through the door. That moment has refused to fade. White was not emptiness. It was culmination. A clearing of noise. A final canvas.
White, was surrender without defeat. White was clarity. White was light, not as glare, but as invitation.
You bore many names, each fitted like a different garment. Each name concealed and revealed in equal measure. Jihad. Ahmad. Mortada. Ellie. Ridwan. Smoke. Wolf. Fox. Ghost. Names chosen for necessity. Names adopted for terrain. Names that moved like tools across different landscapes. Each name was accurate. None were complete.
Imad, the only name you surrendered. The one you allowed to ascend. A name traded upward, bartered with God, in exchange for a self malleable as putty. A self that could be shaped into whatever contour the work required. Leadership without rigidity. Identity without fragility. Conviction without spectacle.
Putty. Yes, you slipped from my grasp like putty whenever I tried to hold the outline of you. Every attempt to isolate the human from the legend dissolved in my hands. I searched for the private man behind the myth, for the pulse beneath the narrative, for something ordinary I could anchor myself to. Something small enough to measure.
But that search was flawed from the start.
The man and the legend were not separate forms. They were not layers stacked upon each other. They were threads woven into the same fabric. The public and the private, the strategist and the friend, the commander and the feeder of clementines. The only true explanation was integration.
You were not divided. You were composed.
A tapestry you were. Not chaotic. Not improvised. Woven with intention across time. I see it now in full, not as scattered color but as design. The blue of mercy, the green of endurance, the orange of sacrifice, the purple of authority, the white of surrender. None accidental. All essential.
And standing before that tapestry, I am left not only with memory but with responsibility. To weave something. However small. However imperfect. To take the colors I have witnessed and begin arranging them into a life that does not fade at dusk.
A tapestry you were. A tapestry I can now see in full. And a tapestry, unfinished and imperfect, I hope one day to begin weaving myself.
Source: Al-Manar English Website