We have not abandoned you, O son of Hussein…

Mujahid al-Suraymi — Sana’a:

No day is like your day, O son of Hussein; nor is there sorrow that rises to the stature of our sorrow at your parting. Hearts are bereft after you, and our innermost beings are seared by the fires of longing and yearning to meet you.

A year has passed since the calamity; yet we confront its first anniversary as if it happened only moments ago! By God, how great you are! Your body vanished so that a spirit might remain to enliven millions of bodies; your eyes were extinguished so as to grant penetrating vision and insight to millions of free, noble, resisting hearts and minds across the world. For who is Nasrallah (our victory) and who is like Hassan (our pride) — the one who bore on his shoulders the nation of two billion, the river from which all eyes flowed and from which every stream branched — I mean those streams that watered the seedlings of resistance against Zionism and arrogance in the Arab‑Islamic world?! Yes: you are the uninterrupted succor of freedom, the sword of jihad, resistance, and liberation whose edge will not be blunted or rust, nor will it be sheathed until Palestine is liberated from the sea to the river.

Are you not the Karbala‑like path, creed, and destination? Are you not the guardian of truth, justice, and humanity from Sana’a to Caracas, from the southern suburbs to Gaza and Damascus and even to Basna? Are you not the anthem of Jerusalem’s liberation, the standard‑bearer, the sanctum of the road, by blood and by sword?

Thus your voice is the prayer of those sent to it, those commissioned by God to purify it from the filth of the criminal Zionist. O master of the promise: your promise is still in force; your truth has only grown in radiance; your certainty has strengthened and spread until it became a unifying covenant for all the free, a creed by which the ranks and brigades of jihad and resistance everywhere arm themselves — saying: No to humiliation, abasement, and surrender; far be it from us to accept degradation! And the common refrain of all is: We remain true to the pledge, O Nasrallah.

Did we weep for you? Yes — we wept, we still weep, and we will continue to weep for you until we join your ranks and stand beside you; yet we march onward on the path whose star you are, a star that shows us how to travel it without pause or deviation. We will accept nothing less than to complete what you began and to perfect the work you created.

Are we bereaved after you? Yes — down to the very bones; even if we were mountains we would be shattered and split! Are you not, as our speaker said, a father to every noble soul who remains dignified?

So you are the eternal wish; you are our dawn that darkness cannot eclipse; you are our day and our tomorrow, all our thought and our way, our sun and moon. You are everything, and every free person after you is called to be a spark of your light, a flame of resistance against the enemy drawn from some of your fire.

Our father: after the calamity that befell us because of you, we will not be the penitents only — we will be the Husayniyyun as you knew us. Before our tongues, our hearts repeat:

We have not abandoned you, O son of Hussein…