Rafik Hariri is buried in downtown Beirut, at the foot of the steps of the Khatem Al Anbiyaa Mosque and across the street from the democratic dissidents' tent-city on Martyr's Square. A shrine has been built that includes Hariri's coffin, his slain bodyguards, photo-montage memorials, and a quarter mile-long wall covered in hand-written messages by people from all over the country.

It is not just a grave site. It's a 24-hour funeral site and a pilgrimage site.

I showed up with my camera and notepad feeling partly like a journalist, partly like a tourist, and partly like a simple interested outsider. All that changed the minute I stood in front of his coffin.

Rafik Hariri was a Sunni Muslim. And his grave is surrounded by candles. Candles are not a part of the Muslim tradition. They are Christian. The shockwave from Hariri's assasination, most likely at the hands of Syrian agents, reverberated powerfully through all sectors of Lebanese society. In life he was a Muslim hero. In death he is a national hero. He's rapidly becoming an international hero, as well.

It has been more than fifty days since he was killed. Yet every day, all day, people line up to mourn and pay their respects. They stand by his coffin. They sign their names and their messages on the wall. They look at the pictures. Sometimes they add more of their own. They light candles. They hug their children and cry.

Grief is contagious. I did not know the man. I'm not even sure I had heard of him before he was gone. But I felt the floor drop out from under me when I saw what he meant to the people of Lebanon. His assasination kicked off a liberal-democratic revolution in an Arab Middle East country - the first ever of its kind - and I knew at once when I arrived that I was standing on an important little piece of this world.

Never in my life have I seen so much affection for a single man. They miss him so much. Their grief has brought them together. And their rage is bringing the Syrian Baath agents down.