For Eli, Three Years On.

This is a heavy post. This is a heavy day. So much to hold, so much to say.

Three years without you, precious Eli. In the physical.
Because you are very much alive in our hearts and minds.
Your name is still called out loudly, every single day.

Three years without your laughter,
that body-shaking chuckle,
your way of caring for people so naturally, so gently.
Your diplomatic instincts.
Your love for life, food, friends and family. Gatherings and celebrations.

Three years of remembering the warmth of your love,
the generosity of your spirit,
your humour, your intelligence,
the revelatory way you saw the world.

Three years of remembering your voice.

You deserved to grow old.
To keep creating, to keep giving.
You were such a big part of the thoughtful change
our country and world needed-
out of corruption, out of bigotry, out of colonialism.

And yet, the greatest irony remains:
you, who stood bravely against exploitation and corruption, paid the ultimate price at the hands of imperial criminals: the France-Afrique mafia.

This is colonialism’s legacy. It stole and ruptured our lands, our livelihoods, and it stole you from me, from us, from Lebanon.

Yes, all death is incomprehensible.

Yet some deaths bear a heavier shadow -
cloaked in injustice, foul play, unaccountability, atrocity.
Yours was one of them.

Three years on, we continue to seek truth, justice, accountability. Until our last breath.

We know that’s what you would have wanted.
What you would have done for any one of us. Because justice must be pursued to stop further crimes, to stop further lives being stolen.

As new investigations into the Perez network unfold -
kidnappings, fraud, embezzlement, corruption
stretching from France to Gabon to Switzerland -
I return again and again to the shadows around your death.

Medical records withheld. Files disappearing.
Diagnoses shifting with every question we asked.
Delays in giving you life-saving antibiotics,
even when we flew them in overnight.
Our efforts to airlift you obstructed at every turn.

The so-called “brother” who lured you to Gabon-
whose first words in that despicable message were “he was poisoned” vanished onto yachts, partying, lying about his whereabouts and circumstances while you lay in a coma. Others came forward to say you had been poisoned- and then disappeared. Until finally, even the FBI summoned me to New York, because there was simply too much shadow, too much contradiction surrounding your death.

The truth has a way of surfacing. Slowly but surely, piece by piece. And these new allegations only confirm that nothing about your death was coincidence.

As anyone living with grief knows, it doesn’t get easier.
In truth, it grows heavier. Especially, when you are left navigating a labyrinth of lies.

As the cushioning of shock and disassociation fades,
grief pierces viscerally right to the bone.

There are days I feel I am being pulled into a black hole,
swallowed whole by void, anguish, despair.
Days I want to scream myself into oblivion. I keep going because carrying you forward is the only way.

So no, grief doesn’t get easier.
We just learn how to carry it.
Shifting and merging with it.
Talking about it, despite the taboos.

We are left to carry you in memory,
in every story retold,
in every person whose life you touched,
in every stand we take against colonial legacies,
exploitation, corruption, and death squads.
In every truth we share.

They say grief teaches patience.
I am not so sure.
But it does teach you how to sit with the heaviest kind of fury.

Time will unravel all truths.
Until then, we remember.
We carry you forward.
We wait for justice.
We sit with our grief.
We sit with our fury.

And we speak aloud,
for you, for ourselves,
and for the voice you were denied and for everyone whose life was cut short at the hands of greed, colonialism and empire.

I love you Eli. I am proud of you. I miss you. No words can capture this feeling we are left with. I will speak you to life everyday of mine.