I've just come from the Embassy of Lebanon in DC where I expected to find a crowd gathered in support and mourning. Instead, I found one man, lighting a candle.

This is Remi.

The first thing Remi says to me is, "I'm not Lebanese. I'm Syrian." He says he came because he immediately felt the pain of the explosion. "Instantly, the city was gone," he said. "It'll never be the same."

The pain of the war is on his face, and it's like a living, breathing thing. It seemed to leap off of him, like a child trusting it would be caught.

He lights three candles, one at a time, letting the wax burn and drip so that it makes a stand for each other. Remi says it's important he brought three, and shows me a bracelet he's wearing, with the Syrian Independence flag. Three stars.

Candles lit, he takes out a Lebanese flag he's brought himself, and holds it up in front of himself, glancing up and down the now nearly empty street. "Where is everyone?" he asks me. I don't know what to tell him.

As I'm leaving, I take one last glance at Remi standing there, in front of the embassy, and its statue of Kahlil Gibran, and I remember one of the poet's great lines, "You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept."