Andy Carvin

According to activists inside and outside Syria, the government's 27-day siege against the opposition stronghold of Baba Amr has now succeeded. Initial reports suggest that forces are entering this neighborhood in the city of Homs, but details are sketchy at best because most of the reporters and citizen journalists covering the story have either fled or died.

One man, though, continues to bear witness. Sami, known as @samsomhoms on Twitter, is one of the last holdouts in Homs continuing to report on the dire situation there.

Our car pulled over along a deserted traffic circle in a small Jordanian village. An old man freshly covered in thick, wet sleet climbed into the back seat, his cold breath reeking of cigarettes.

"This is Khaled," my Syrian contact said. "He will show us to the border."

It took the better part of today to get from Amman, Jordan, to the Syrian border. A freak rain storm followed by a sudden blizzard had turned what should have been a two-hour drive into something much worse, as Jordanians seem to drive in snow as poorly as my fellow Washingtonians do. The goal had been to reach the border by mid-afternoon, but dusk was now fast approaching.

We arrived nearly an hour late, our taxi drivers lost in the potholed, half-flooded streets of Tripoli. Our Libyan host, who would never have fathomed an on-time start anyway, invited us upstairs, where he had managed to arrange an impressive array of hors d'oeuvres and beverages on such short notice.

People arrived in groups of three or four at a time. Everyone knew almost everyone else. They hugged each other as if it could be their last time, struggled to hold back the tears, occasionally finding a way to evince a smile from each other.

A lanky Libyan man leans hard against the railing, looking out at the waves of the Mediterranean crashing below us on the seafront in Benghazi. He's lost in thought for a moment, then shakes his head and takes a long drag from his cigarette.

"They were dropping like flies," he says. "I knew I was going to die next."

But somehow, he didn't. He goes by the street name Danny Vampire, a name that he picked up as a teenager nearly a decade ago. Now 25, he's a battle-hardened veteran of Libya's 2011 revolution. One year ago this week, though, he was just a young cameraman who saw a rare opportunity to fight back.

A light mist of cold rain started falling on us from the moment we reached the cemetery. If I hadn't felt it on my face, I probably wouldn't have even noticed it, as the hardscrabble stretching throughout the grave yard appeared just as parched as one might expect in a desert country.

I had driven to the southern outskirts of Benghazi to visit the grave of a friend -– a virtual friend who I had never met in person, and quite honestly, had only interacted with on a limited basis. His name was Mohamed "Mo" Nabbous, as he was the first independent journalist to come out of Libya's revolution.

Stepping out of my hotel on Friday evening, I could see cars backed up for miles, stretching all the way around the Benghazi's biggest lake, not far from the shores of the Mediterranean.

Horns blared in every direction, but not just car horns: bull horns, oo-gahhorns, vuvuzelas, aerosol-powered horns, even a bagpipe or two. The air smelled of exhaust, gasoline and the occasional whiff of hash. It was a cacophonous mess, overwhelming, painful to the ears, joyful, extraordinary.

Stepping closer to the cars, I could see people of all ages stretching out the windows, waving Libyan independence flags that were sometimes larger than the person waving them. Boys and girls, men and women, the elderly, they'd all come out to celebrate.

I've spent the day in the company of Malik L, a Benghazi-based hip hop artist who seems to get stopped every 100 feet by either a friend or a fan. In between these conversations, I asked Malik about what celebrations were scheduled for tonight.

"I have no idea," he replied. "No one does. Libya has never done this before. We don't know how to celebrate an anniversary."

While pretty much any corner of Benghazi is a fine place to celebrate this week, the heart of the celebrations are taking place at the courthouse and its public square, where some of the revolution's first protests took place.

As a brutally chilly rain peppered us from the Mediterranean, I wandered down there for a few hours, where at least one thousand men had begun their own celebrations. The crowd was awash in Libyan independence flags as young men in the middle pounded drums to punctuate each revolutionary chant. I think I met about half of the Libyans there, generally in one of three scenarios:

They came over to shake my hand just to say "Welcome;"

They insisted on having their picture taken, either with a friend or with me;

The streets of Benghazi have turned into the world's most joyous parking lot.

Every single vehicle, moving slower than a toddler walking, is honking its horn in a variety of patterns to celebrate the first anniversary of the revolution.

While Libyans often use certain honking patterns in everyday driving – two honks for "Hey there" and three honks to show your displeasure – the honking Thursday night can only be described as poetic. The most common horn pattern is two sets of five beeps: beep beep beep beep BEEP, beep beep beep beep BEEP. The pattern matches the beats to a common chant used during the revolution: "Hold your head up high; you are free Libyans."

The plane landed at Benghazi airport, about an hour late, which seemed just about right to most people on board. Elderly women sported tattoos from their bottom lip to the tip of their chin; several men carefully removed plants that somehow survived being crushed in the overhead luggage bins.

Inside the airport, there were two desks with immigration officers sitting at them — one for Libyan passports, the other for everyone else. The entire plane queued up in front of the Libyan passport desk, while I approached the other desk, no one in front nor behind me. The immigration officer looked up, surprised to see someone coming off the plane who needed his attention.