Unbroken Vision

Our photographer asks Mohammed Abed about the lights, making sure they aren’t bothering him. He sips his coffee, smokes, and waits for the crew to finish setting up.

“It’s OK, I can feel the warmth of the light, even if I can’t see it,” he says.  

Mohammed senses the awkward hush settling over the studio. He breaks the ice himself, asking to be excused so he can reply to a message he has just received on WhatsApp. Then he laughs wryly: He cannot read it anyway.

“I lived without a smartphone for years,” he says. “But since returning to civilian life after my injury, I’ve been carrying one.”

After the bismallahs and introductions, he says, “These days mark the 25th anniversary of the passing of my uncle and friend, Mohammed Abed, martyr of struggle and resistance.” He recalls his puzzlement as a child when he watched his uncle evacuate a Christian family from a neighboring building during the 1996 Israeli assault on Lebanon.

“Why is he helping the neighbors before us? We are his family!” the 7-year-old Mohammed remembers exclaiming at the time. That day, Abed learned his first lesson in selflessness and came to understand that “serving others is an act of worship — one that a person is honored to perform.”

His uncle, a fighter with the Amal Movement, was remembered fondly in Sour, the city he defended. He was once abducted by the occupation forces and taken to Atlit prison in northern occupied Palestine, and was later detained by Zionist collaborators in Khiam prison in southern Lebanon. He was released with other political prisoners in 2000, “as if fate had decreed that his eyes be comforted by the sight of a liberated South before God took him a month later, after battling an illness.”

Mohammed left school at an early age to help support his family and his siblings’ education. At 14, he worked as a baker and a falafel maker alongside his grandfather and uncles, every day from midnight until 1 p.m. “My mother struggled,” he says. “She worked in a clothing shop and raised four sons.”

No one could make up for his father’s absence during his childhood. Through every tribulation, the sea remained his refuge. He was bound to it, he says, by a “divine relationship.”

“How can I explain it? Every time I sit alone on the beach, complaining of my woes, the waves bring forth a healing answer from the horizon.” 

In 2005, Mohammed joined the Civil Defense. During an evening gathering, he and his fellow volunteers chose nicknames for themselves. His was “Abu Sharif.”

On the morning of July 30, 2006, hours after the Qana massacre, Mohammed arrived at the site with the Civil Defense team. “The enemy barred us from approaching to rescue the injured and retrieve the bodies of the martyred, and we didn’t have any heavy equipment to clear the rubble.” Because of his small build, Mohammed was sent into the collapsed building to rescue a trapped family. “I saw no injuries on their bodies,” he says. “They had all died by suffocation.”

Mohammed was also part of an emergency mission to the village of Maaroub, where Israel committed a massacre at the Imam Ali Orphanage on August 7, 2006. “I guessed the age of the martyred child [Haidar Khalil Moussa] by the size of his hand, then gathered his scattered remains,” he says. “The scene still haunts me. Thats's why I decided to join the ranks of the resistance at the end of the war.”

He describes the overwhelming joy he felt on the morning of October 7, 2023, with the launch of the al-Aqsa Flood operation. Abu Sharif said his goodbye to his wife and infant son, Ali Mortada, bearer of what he calls the secret. “I told her I didn’t know when I would return. During the battle on the Support Front, I went home only a handful of times,” he says, gesturing with his right hand.

“The farmer planting tobacco and olive saplings in the border villages; the person defending their land, honor, and dignity until their final breath; the young man devoting the prime of his youth to serving and building the resistance,” that's what resistance is, for Abu Sharif.

When asked about his injury, he recounts a vision he had near the end of Ramadan in early April. He spent Laylat al-Qadr in worship, then lay down on his bed. An hour and a half later, he woke up terrified, which was unlike him. He tried to forget about the nightmare and gave to charity, hoping to ward off misfortune. In the dream, he saw himself driving when his car was struck head-on by a missile. He staggered onto the road, his hand severed and his eyes extinguished, walked a few steps and fell to the ground.

When the pager massacre occurred, Abu Sharif felt as though he had been waiting for the injury.

In July 2024, Israel assassinated Fouad Shukr, a senior military commander in Hezbollah, in an airstrike on a residential building in Dahieh, which also killed six civilians. Footage of the aftermath shows extensive damage, with rubble and debris injuring dozens of civilians. Israel described the attack as a “targeted, intelligence-based elimination.” 

Abu Sharif happened to be home at the time. “My son, Ali Mortada, had spent the day crying for no apparent reason. But as soon as the martyrdom of Sayyid Mohsen was announced, the child calmed and fell silent.” 

Mohammed noticed the same ominous crying, as he understood it, at several turning points in the war. “There is a secret in this child,” he says.

Home at dawn, on September 17, Abu Sharif rose to pray. His son woke up with him, crying, and could be soothed only in his father’s arms. Each time Mohammed held him, the child brushed a small hand over his father’s eyes and smiled. When he set him down, the crying resumed.

“I feel like I’m leaving and not coming back,” he told his wife, “like it’s my last day.”

“Trust in God,” she replied, as they said goodbye.

“She accepted me as her husband, knowing that my fate could be injury, captivity, or martyrdom.” 

Like many women who shared their lives with resistance fighters — she had prepared herself for loss, hoping that preparation would lessen its weight.

Later in the day, Abu Sharif’s superior noticed his agitation. “What’s come over you? Why do you look like it’s your last day?” he asked. 

“There, you said it yourself,” Abu Sharif answered. 

His superior advised him to return home to his family, hoping he might find comfort with them. Abu Sharif handed over his duties, just in case, and headed home.

“I took the road to my parents’ house to pick up my eldest son, but an intuition— or a divine mercy — led me instead to the road I had seen in my dream, where my younger brother Sajed’s restaurant is.”

The brothers greeted each other. Abu Sharif told Sajed that his heart was filled with dread. Sajed ordered two cups of coffee from the neighboring shop and drew close to his troubled brother.

 Suddenly, the pager sounded — loud and unfamiliar, even though the device was set to silent. Abu Sharif shoved his brother away and pulled the device from his waist. It was burning like an ember. He threw it into the air, and it exploded in his face, hurling him several meters away.

He cried out to al-Zahra’ and to the Mahdi as he lay bleeding on the very road he had seen during Laylat al-Qadr. Scenes from his dream replayed in his mind as panic spread around him.

His friend Hussein Fadel, “Abu Ali Jihad”, was the first to check on him at Jabal Amel Hospital. He offered him comfort and certainty that the ordeal will pass. 

Mohammed says he already knew that martyrdom would be the fate of his fellow mujahid: “He was living his life as a martyr — wounded, loyal to the path, and devoted to his mission until his last days.”

A few days later, Mohammed was transferred to Syria. There, he had a brief exchange with a doctor that weighed heavily on him. The doctor told him bluntly that he had permanently lost his sight.

It was a Friday night, and Abu Sharif went to sleep distressed after receiving a dose of painkillers. In his sleep, he dreamt of a woman whose face radiated light so intensely that he could not look directly at her.

 “She lifted me from my hospital bed and placed me between the two holy sanctuaries in Mecca and Medina. The place was empty except for her. Then she said to me, ‘My son Imam Hussein is one eye, and my son Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas is the other eye.’ Then she passed her hands over my eyes.”

In Iran, a doctor could not bring himself to share the results of Mohammed's tests. When Abu Sharif told him about the dream, they wept together.

One night, his friend Mahmoud Hamto appeared to him in a dream. “Mahmoud stood on the roof of our house, smiling, behind my uncle Mohammed, who was dressed in white. ‘When will it be my turn?’ I asked my uncle. ‘Your turn is coming. Be patient,’ he responded.” 

Two days later, Mohammed received news of Mahmoud’s martyrdom. Mahmoud was a kindhearted man, beloved by everyone around him. Military life had kept them apart for long stretches, but the warmth between them remained. 

Another night, his childhood friend Shehade Ka‘ur visited him in a dream. Mohammed had grown up with Shehade and his brothers. In the dream, one of Shehade’s brothers approaches Mohammed, placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Go on — reconcile your two brothers, as you always do.”

The very next day, that same brother called to tell him that Shehade had been martyred. 

“I grieved deeply,” Mohammed says. “God chose the best of companions and took them as martyrs. I have never known anyone more loyal or devoted in my life.”

He concludes by returning to Palestine. “Palestine is the soul, in the words of Hajj Radwan [Imad Moghnieh], and the Southerner’s heart is attached to that soil. The oppression of her people is etched in our consciousness, and we won’t abandon any land of resistance.”

For Abu Sharif, the resistance is “the farmer planting tobacco and olive saplings in the border villages; every person defending their land, honor, and dignity until their final breath. It is the young man devoting the prime of his youth to serving and building the resistance.”

After we finished filming, his friend remarked on Abu Sharif’s newfound eloquence — a side of him he had rarely seen before the injury, when Mohammed was known for his quiet demeanor. Now, Mohammed sits with younger men at the neighborhood café, listening to their troubles, trying to help resolve them, and always returning to why the resistance is worthwhile.

That evening, a video of an impromptu march through the streets of Sour circulated widely. Abu Sharif was at the front, chanting for his people’s right to armed resistance — to defend themselves and their land.