I took a photo this morning of the portrait on my office wall; your portrait.
In the glass, my own reflection stares back, phone in hand, caught mid-thought.
As if to ask: Who is watching whom?
Twenty years.
It feels absurd to write it.
Because twenty years are enough to forget a person.
And yet, we’ve never stopped speaking your name.
We never agreed to let memory soften the truth.
You were not a martyr of circumstance.
You were assassinated. Deliberately. Publicly.
Because your words unsettled the criminals in power.
In these two decades, we’ve seen everything:
Revolutions shouted in your voice.
Hope rising and crashing under boots, and in queues at the doors of zombie banks.
We built institutions in your name.
We launched awards, shelters, programs, protests.
We sat in meeting rooms and funeral halls.
We told ourselves that we were continuing your path.
But if I’m honest, today is actually about your absence.
The kind that doesn’t fade.
The kind that still asks: What would Samir have written this morning?
Would he have lost faith in reform, in people?
Would he still believe in Beirut’s power to inspire the Arab world? I struggle to say yes. I dare not say no.
Or would he, like always, write with fire and logic?
I don’t know.
I can only say that every sentence we write in defiance, every truth we print without permission, every young journalist who refuses to bow…
…is your unfinished article.
