Their names were Khalil and Muhammad, both in their late 20s, both experienced fighters who had served in Syria.

Khalil drove while Muhammad sat in the front passenger seat.

I sat in the back with a small bag containing my clothes and documents for the Damascus meeting.

We left Nabatier and drove north through South Lebanon, passing through villages I had known my entire life.

Villages where Hezbollah flags hung from buildings and posters of martyrs covered the walls.

The drive north was uneventful and we passed through several Hezbollah checkpoints where the guards recognized me and waved us through without inspection.

We drove through the Bear Valley, Lebanon’s agricultural heartland and also a Hezbollah stronghold.

The valley was beautiful in March, green from winter rains, with snow still visible on the peaks of Mount Lebanon to the west and the anti-Lban mountains to the east.

We were making good time and would reach Damascus by early afternoon if nothing delayed us.

As we approached Beirut, Khalil suggested we stop briefly in the southern suburbs, an area called Dahier, which is completely controlled by Hezbollah.

He said there was a safe house there where I could pick up some additional documents that had been prepared for the Damascus meeting.

I agreed.

We exited the main highway and entered the narrow streets of Dahier.

This area had been heavily bombed by Israel during the 2006 war, but it had been rebuilt with Iranian money.

New apartment buildings stood where destroyed ones had been.

Hezbollah offices and military positions were hidden among civilian structures, a tactic we had perfected over decades.

Everyone in Dahier supported Hezbollah.

It was the safest place in Lebanon for us.

Or so I thought.

We pulled up in front of a five-story apartment building on a side street.

Khalil parked the SUV and turned off the engine.

“I will come with you, Hajj,” Muhammad said, reaching for his door handle.

But I shook my head.

“No need.

I know this place.

I will only be a few minutes.

Wait here and keep the engine ready”.

I got out of the vehicle and walked toward the building entrance.

The street was quiet, just a few people walking by and some children playing near a corner store.

normal everyday life.

I entered the building and climbed the stairs to the third floor.

The safe house was apartment 302.

I knocked in our coded pattern and the door opened immediately.

A young Hezbollah intelligence officer greeted me respectfully and handed me a sealed envelope containing updated intelligence reports about Israeli positions.

We spoke for maybe 5 minutes.

He offered me tea, but I declined, wanting to get back on the road.

I thanked him, took the envelope, and left the apartment.

I walked down the stairs and pushed open the building’s front door, stepping back out into the street.

The sun was bright, and I squinted against it.

As I walked toward our SUV parked about 20 m away, I could see Khalil and Muhammad sitting inside, waiting for me.

Then I heard it.

There a sound that every fighter learns to recognize and fear.

A high-pitched whistle, something small and fast cutting through the air, falling from the sky.

My mind processed it instantly.

Incoming missile, drone strike.

I looked up instinctively, searching the blue sky, but saw nothing.

The whistle grew louder, closer, and I knew with absolute certainty that I had only seconds left to live.

I tried to run, tried to dive for cover, but my 68-year-old body was too slow.

The missile struck our SUV directly.

The explosion was massive.

A ball of fire and pressure that expanded outward faster than sound.

The blast wave hit me like an invisible wall moving at incredible speed.

It lifted me off my feet and threw me backward through the air.

I felt intense heat hotter than anything I had ever experienced as if I had been thrown into a furnace.

The pressure crushed my chest, forcing all the air from my lungs.

I flew backward and slammed into the wall of the building behind me.

My head cracked against the concrete.

Everything went bright white, then dark, then white again in rapid flashes.

I fell to the ground in a heap, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to process what had just happened.

For a few seconds, maybe longer, I felt nothing.

My mind was blank, stunned into silence by the violence of the blast.

Then the pain came, rushing in like a flood.

My entire body screamed in agony.

I tried to breathe but could not.

My lungs would not work.

I gasped and choked and finally a small amount of air entered but it made a terrible gurgling sound.

Blood.

My lungs were filling with blood.

I opened my eyes and saw smoke everywhere.

A thick black smoke that smelled of burning rubber and gasoline and something else.

burning flesh.

The SUV was completely destroyed, just a twisted, burning wreck.

Khalil and Muhammad were dead, incinerated instantly.

I could see flames and melted metal where the vehicle had been.

I tried to move my arms to push myself up, but my left arm would not respond.

I looked down at my body and saw blood everywhere, soaking through my clothes, pooling on the pavement beneath me.

My left leg was bent at an unnatural angle, clearly broken.

My abdomen and chest were torn open by shrapnel.

Pieces of metal embedded in my flesh.

I could see inside my own body, see the damage, see the blood pumping out with each heartbeat.

People were running toward me now, shouting in Arabic.

I could see their mouths moving, but could barely hear them because my ears were ringing from the blast.

A high-pitched whine that blocked out almost everything else.

Someone knelt beside me and pressed their hands against my chest, trying to stop the bleeding.

I felt the pressure, but it seemed distant, like it was happening to someone else.

My vision started to narrow, like I was looking through a tunnel that was slowly closing.

The edges went dark first, leaving only a small circle of light in the center.

I knew what this meant.

I had seen enough men die to recognize the signs.

I was dying.

These were my final moments.

Panic gripped me, overwhelming the physical pain.

I tried to speak, tried to say the shahada, the declaration of faith that every Muslim must say before death.

Allah, I bear witness that there is no god but Allah.

But my mouth filled with blood.

I choked on it, coughed it up, tried again.

Muhammad and rasool Allah.

And I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.

But the words would not come out clearly.

They were just wet gurgling sounds, nonsense mixed with blood.

Terror filled my heart.

If I could not say the shahada properly before dying.

Would Allah reject me?

Would I be denied paradise because I died choking on my own blood, unable to speak the words clearly?

I had spent my entire life serving Allah, fighting his enemies, sacrificing everything for Islam.

But in this final moment, I could not even say the simple prayer that would secure my entrance to paradise.

The unfairness of it crushed me.

68 years of devotion, of 40 years of jihad, all of it possibly wasted because a missile struck me down before I could speak a few words.

I tried again and again to force the words out, but my throat was full of blood and my tongue would not work.

The tunnel of my vision continued to collapse, the circle of light getting smaller and smaller.

The sounds around me faded away until even the ringing in my ears became distant.

I felt cold despite the burning wreckage nearby.

My whole body began to feel numb, the pain fading into a strange floating sensation.

I could no longer feel the hands pressing on my chest.

I could no longer feel the pavement beneath me.

I was drifting away, separating somehow from my body.

The last thing I saw was the face of a young man leaning over me, his mouth moving, probably saying a prayer.

Then the circle of light collapsed completely and everything went black.

My heart stopped beating.

I was dead.

The darkness did not last long.

I became aware that I still existed, that somehow I was still conscious even though my body was dead.

I felt myself rising upward, lifting away from something.

I opened my eyes or whatever served as eyes in this state and looked down.

What I saw shocked me completely.

I was floating above the street in Dier, looking down at my own body, lying on the pavement.

There was so much blood around me.

A dark red pool spreading outward.

People surrounded my body, at least a dozen of them now.

Some trying to help, others just staring in horror.

I could see my chest torn open by shrapnel, completely still, not breathing.

My eyes were open, but empty, staring at nothing.

One man was pressing his hands against my wounds.

Um, but blood kept flowing between his fingers.

Another man was on his phone, probably calling for an ambulance, but I could see from up here that it was too late.

That body down there was dead.

I was dead.

Yet here I was, floating above it all, watching everything with perfect clarity.

I felt no pain anymore, no difficulty breathing, no weight or limitation.

I felt light, free, like I had been released from a prison I did not know I was in.

I kept rising higher, passing up through the air above the street.

I could see the burning wreckage of our SUV, twisted metal, still a flame, smoke rising in a thick black column.

I could see the apartment buildings of Dahi spreading out below me, flat roofs covered with water tanks and satellite dishes.

I saw people running toward the explosion site from every direction.

While I saw Hezbollah security teams arriving, men with weapons securing the area, looking up at the sky for the drone that had fired the missile.

But I kept rising, and soon the whole neighborhood became visible below me.

Then the entire southern suburbs of Beirut, then the city itself and the Mediterranean Sea beyond.

I was rising faster now, accelerating upward.

The whole country of Lebanon became visible.

A small strip of land squeezed between the sea and the mountains.

I could see Syria to the east, Israel to the south.

Then even those landmarks became small and distant as I rose higher and higher.

I passed through clouds that felt like cool mist against whatever I had become.

I kept going up until I could see the curve of the earth itself below me.

The blue of the oceans and the brown of the land masses.

It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

Then I entered a space of complete darkness.

Not the darkness of night, but an absolute void where there was nothing to see in any direction.

I felt like I was moving through this darkness, being pulled forward by something I could not see or understand.

I should have been terrified, but I was not.

I felt a presence with me in the darkness, something or someone guiding me, protecting me, drawing me toward a destination.

The darkness lasted for what felt like a long time.

Though time itself seemed different here, not measured in seconds or minutes, but in some other way I could not explain.

Then I saw light ahead.

A small point of light in the distance growing larger as I moved toward it.

The light was warm, golden, beautiful.

It called to me without words, inviting me, welcoming me.

I, as I got closer, the light expanded and surrounded me.

I entered into it and suddenly I was somewhere else entirely.

I was standing on solid ground in a place more beautiful than anything I had ever seen or imagined in my 68 years of life.

The colors were so vivid, so alive that the colors of Earth seemed dull and dead by comparison.

There were colors here I had never seen before, shades that do not exist in the physical world.

I stood on grass that was greener than any grass in Lebanon, so green it almost glowed.

Each blade seemed to have its own inner light.

Flowers grew everywhere around me.

Enormous flowers with petals like precious jewels, red and blue and purple and gold.

Trees rose up into a sky that was not blue but a soft golden color that seemed to radiate peace.

A river flowed nearby where and the water was perfectly clear, clearer than any water I had ever seen, sparkling like liquid diamonds.

The air smelled sweet like honey and flowers and something else I could not name.

Something pure and clean and perfect.

Every breath I took filled me with energy and joy.

I looked down at myself and saw that I was different.

I was no longer old.

My body was young and strong like I had been at 25.

My leg was not broken.

My chest was not torn open.

There was no blood, no pain, no weakness.

I felt powerful and healthy and whole.

I looked at my hands and turned them over, marveling at the smooth skin with no scars, no age spots, no signs of the decades I had lived.

I felt like I could run forever without getting tired.

I felt alive in a way I had never felt on earth.

But where was I?

Was this Jenna the paradise that Islam promised?

I had expected something different based on what the Quran and the hadith described.

I had expected gardens with rivers flowing beneath them.

Yes, and I saw something like that here.

But where were the hurries, the beautiful virgin women promised to martyrs?

Where were the young boys serving wine in golden cups?

Where were the couches lined with silk where the blessed would recline?

Where were the other martyrs who had died before me?

I had expected to see my son Ali here and my brothers who had fallen in battle over the decades.

I had expected to see the prophet Muhammad and the imams.

But I saw none of these things.

I was alone in this beautiful place and something felt wrong.

This was not exactly what I had been taught to expect.

Confusion mixed with my wonder.

Then I heard footsteps behind me, but and I felt a presence approaching that made every part of me suddenly aware and alert.

The air itself seemed to change to become charged with power and authority.

I turned around slowly and what I saw made my knees weak.

A man was standing on the path about 20 ft away from me.

But I knew immediately that he was not just a man.

Light radiated from him, not reflected light, but light that came from within him, shining outward in gentle waves.

His robe was white, whiter than snow, whiter than anything in this already brilliant place.

The robe seemed to be made of light woven into fabric.

His face was both gentle and powerful at the same time.

I could see kindness in his expression, but also authority that made me want to fall down.

His eyes looked directly at me, and I felt like those eyes could see everything about me, the every thought I had ever had, every action I had ever taken, every secret I had ever hidden.

Nothing was concealed from that gaze.

His hair was dark and fell to his shoulders.

He was smiling at me, not a mocking smile or a smile of judgment.

but a smile of welcome and love as if he had been waiting for me and was genuinely happy that I had arrived.

I did not know who this was, but power radiated from him in a way that terrified and attracted me at the same time.

Every instinct in me said that I was standing before someone of supreme importance, someone divine.

I thought perhaps this was one of the imams or maybe even the prophet Muhammad himself.

But something in my heart told me that was not right.

This person felt different from anything I had been taught about in Islam.

I stood frozen, unable to move or speak, just staring at him.

The he began walking toward me, each step smooth and graceful.

As he came closer, the light around him seemed to intensify.

I wanted to run away and I wanted to run toward him at the same time.

Fear and love mixed together in my chest in a way I had never experienced.

When he was close enough to touch me, he stopped and looked into my eyes.

I began to tremble.

Tears started flowing down my face without me deciding to cry.

I did not understand why I was crying.

He reached out and placed both of his hands on my shoulders.

The moment he touched me, warmth flooded through my entire being.

It was like electricity, but gentle, like fire, but it did not burn.

Peace washed over me in waves.

A peace so deep and complete that I had no words for it.

All my fear melted away, but not the awe.

I was still in awe of who stood before me.

But I was no longer afraid.

Hassan, he said, and his voice was like nothing I had ever heard.

It was powerful like thunder, but gentle like music.

It echoed through my whole being, not just in my ears, but in my chest, my mind, my soul.

He knew my name.

“Do you know who I am”?

he asked gently.

I shook my head, unable to speak.

“I had a suspicion, a growing terrible suspicion, but I did not want to believe it.

It could not be”.

“Look at my hands,” he said softly.

He held out his hands in front of me, palms upward.

I looked down at them and my breath caught.

There were scars on his hands, holes where something had pierced through, wounds that had healed but left permanent marks.

I stared at those scars and my mind raced.

I knew what those were.

Every Muslim knew the Christian claim that Jesus had been crucified, that nails had been driven through his hands and feet.

But we were taught that it never happened.

That Allah made it appear that Jesus was crucified but actually took him up to heaven without death.

We were taught that the crucifixion was a Christian invention, a lie.

But here were the scars, real and undeniable, in the hands of this glorious being standing before me.

No, I whispered.

It cannot be.

But even as I said it, I knew the truth.

I knew who stood before me.

This was Jesus, not Issa, the prophet that we learned about in Islam.

This was Jesus Christ.

And the scars on his hands proved that he had truly been crucified.

Everything I had been taught was wrong.

He smiled sadly as if he knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling.

Yes, Hassan, he said.

I am Jesus.

I am not just a prophet.

I am not just a messenger.

I am the son of God.

I am God himself who came to earth in human form to save humanity from sin.

His words hit me like physical blows.

I staggered backward, shaking my head in denial.

No, no, that is sherk.

That is blasphemy, I said, using the Islamic term for the unforgivable sin of associating partners with Allah.

Allah has no son.

The Quran says so.

You are just a prophet.

You came before Muhammad, you are not God.

But even as I spoke these words, I knew they were lies.

I could feel the truth radiating from him.

This was no mere prophet standing before me.

This was someone far greater.

Jesus looked at me with infinite patience and love.

I know what you were taught, Hassan, he said gently.

I know you spent 68 years believing that I was only a prophet.

I know you fought and killed in the name of Islam, a believing you were serving God.

I know you rejected me and my teachings, considering them corrupted lies.

But now you are here standing before me, and you can see the truth with your own eyes.

I am exactly who the Christians say I am.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

I fell to my knees overwhelmed by what I was hearing and seeing.

Continue reading….
« Prev Next »