I met Anthony Shadid several years ago, as Lebanon was trying to make its way through car bombings and posters of assassinated politicians. The ghosts of the war had reappeared in a surreal and complicated scene.Lebanon was making headlines around the world and Beirut was crowded with people who were looking for a story.

As the Foreign Press Secretary of Gen. Michel Aoun, I had met with nearly all the foreign reporters in the country, and came to know a few better than others. I met reporters who had come to the Middle East for the first time and were surprised that women actually drove cars in Lebanon. I met those who thought that Lebanon was a Hezbollah land where men wore turbans and women black chadors.

I met those who enjoyed the pubs of Gemmayzeh so much that they forgot what they came here for in the first place. I also met those who tried to be correct, to tell all sides of the story. I didn’t envy them because their mission was pretty complicated.

There was everybody, and then there was Anthony Shadid.

On the phone, as I laid out some guidelines for the interview that Anthony had requested with Gen. Aoun, he interrupted me. He felt my hesitation and sensed my concern. I had had a few bad experiences with foreign reporters at that time and I was cautious.

“It doesn’t have to be an on-the-record interview,” he said. “It can be an off-the-record encounter ... I just want to understand.”

“Understand” was a word I had practically never heard from a reporter before, but would often hear when I met with Anthony for a professional or social meeting. “May, I need to understand,” he would repeat, relentless.

Anthony needed to understand first, and take the quote later.

He needed to understand first, and make the headline later.

Despite many divergent stances, I was glad to have Anthony, standing out in this crowd of reporters, shape the way the world looks at Lebanon. And I didn’t worry about whether the story would be told because I knew that Anthony’s piece would be the reference. Now that he’s gone, I do worry.

As turmoil and political instability ravaged Lebanon, Anthony’s omnipresent smile betrayed concern. “May, what do you think will happen?” he would ask every time I saw him. He was not eager to be the first one to anticipate the story or to report on it, but he was truly concerned about “his Lebanon.” He feared for “his Jdeidet Marjayoun,” for the bakery there, for the ancestral stone house of his family that he restored and for the life he promised himself to have in Lebanon. While others were leaving the country, Anthony was coming back.

There was Marjayoun, and there was Leila, his daughter. He always had a recent picture of her on his Blackberry to show me, proud but torn apart by geography and the tough requirements of his career. He wanted her to know Lebanon, to visit Lebanon, to love Lebanon. I wished we – the Lebanese who were born in Lebanon – truly loved our land and our country half as much as he did.

I hadn’t seen Anthony for quite some time but his presence resounded loudly with each and every word he wrote on conflicts, on the Arab Spring or the Arab “fall.” He mostly reported on the people, giving names and faces to those lost in the masses and voices to those who no longer had any.

Last Thursday, night came too near, too soon. The light of day that shone on Anthony was not the one that shines on earthly mortals, but was the pure and glowing light from heaven. Anthony, we will miss you and “your Lebanon” will miss you. Until our day comes, I’ll tell you, as always, “See you later, my friend.”

May Akl is the Foreign Press Officer at the Free Patriotic Movement.