The late foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid was remembered at a memorial service in Beirut on Tuesday just days after his death at the age of 43. Shadid died of an apparent asthma attack while covering the conflict in Syria. Tyler Hicks, Shadid’s colleague at the New York Times and the last person to see him alive, recounted a moment from one of their final nights together in Syria.

Tyler Hicks: “I took my cameras, and we walked down the street around the corner to where Anthony was. As is custom, I took off my boots, went into this room, and it was the most amazing scene. All the fighters that we had been with that day were sitting in that big carpeted room, all of them smoking cigarettes. The whole room was full of smoke. One of them was playing a traditional instrument. There was singing and dancing, having this amazing party. And just across the room, sitting among them, right in the middle, was Anthony. And I just looked at him, and he said, 'Tyler, can you believe this? Look at this,' with the biggest smile on his face.”

Also speaking at Shadid’s memorial service was Jill Abramson, executive editor of the New York Times.

Jill Abramson: '’He wrote something that is incredibly moving and true. He wrote: ’No one really knows the script for days like these, and neither did we.' I think that’s true of all of us here this evening. Yesterday, his mother Randa said that Anthony had given her her happiest and proudest moments in life and also the saddest one. A buddy talked about Anthony’s restless spirit and how he loved to run and that it was impossible to imagine that he was gone.’’