As news spread on Saturday that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had been killed in his underground bunker in Beirut by an Israeli airstrike, people quietly began to reckon with the possibility that Lebanon’s political architecture would change for the first time Times for more than three years could change decades. And that, in turn, raised the prospect that closed doors might soon be opening across the Middle East.

Those who have fought Hezbollah — not just Israelis but also Lebanese from across the country’s sectarian divides, as well as Syrians and Yemenis — may recognize the tantalizing possibility that the Shiite movement’s dominance may be at an end. Many others feared that a sudden power vacuum could return Lebanon to a civil war that had tormented its people for 15 years before Hezbollah emerged in the early 1980s.

Nasrallah was more than a political leader. After 32 years in power, he had become synonymous with Hezbollah, the world’s best-armed non-state actor and the linchpin of Iran’s tentacled “Axis of Resistance” toward Israel and the United States.

You could almost feel the gravity of the moment when the bombs fell on Friday evening – the largest bombardment Israel has carried out on Beirut since Hezbollah attacked Israel on October 8 last year. I heard and felt the attack miles away from where it struck in the southern suburbs of the city. The deep sound that shook the ground like thunderous thunder lasted for several seconds. People on the street looked anxiously at the sky, clutched their phones, and called to check on their loved ones. Car alarms went off.

Almost immediately the rumors started: Nasrallah was dead, he was in hiding and there was a threat of civil war. The same television footage from the bomb site ran all night and the next morning, showing a mound of burning rubble and twisted steel. Had Israel, as it claimed, scored a direct hit on Hezbollah’s underground command center, it seemed impossible to believe that anyone inside could have survived.

Beirut was a transformed city on Saturday, its main squares filled with dazed people who had fled all the places Israel had bombed overnight, from Beirut to the Bekaa Valley to southern Lebanon. Families huddled together, their eyes empty and fearful. It seemed like there were no safe places left. Some of those displaced were Syrians who had fled the horrors of civil war in their own country a decade ago and were now homeless again.

Nasrallah was such a central figure for so long – the most powerful man in Lebanon and Israel’s greatest enemy; He was loved, hated and imitated by anti-Western insurgent leaders across the Middle East – and his absence left many Lebanese feeling completely disoriented. There were occasional shots fired throughout the day. It was impossible to say whether it came from mourners or celebrants.

Shortly after Hezbollah announced Nasrallah’s death on Saturday afternoon, there were spontaneous rallies where people chanted in unison Labayka, you Nasrallah– “We are here for you, Nasrallah.” Normally, all Hezbollah activities are carefully organized by the party itself, a strict and hierarchical organization. But with the group leaderless and in disarray, no one seemed to know where to turn for guidance.

Some Hezbollah supporters directed their anger at Iran, the group’s patron and arms supplier, which has failed to come to their aid after weeks of punishing airstrikes. “Iran sold us out,” I heard a man say in a Beirut cafe on Saturday afternoon, a phrase that was widely repeated on social media among Hezbollah sympathizers. Other Hezbollah supporters appeared to target Syrian refugees they suspected of passing targeted information to Israel. Videos circulated online allegedly showing Shiite men brutally beating Syrians with batons.

“It’s an earthquake that has restructured the perception of power,” Paul Salem, vice president of international engagement at the Middle East Institute, told me. Those who could benefit from Nasrallah’s death include Nabih Berri, the leader of the rival Shiite Amal party, and former Christian warlords such as Samir Geagea, Salem said.

Outside Lebanon, some of Hezbollah’s enemies celebrated openly. In Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province, people danced in the streets and handed out sweets on Friday evening as rumors of Nasrallah’s death spread. Hezbollah helped prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime during the Syrian civil war and killed many opposition fighters. Some Iranians opposed to their country’s Islamist government posted mocking comments online, as did members of the Iranian diaspora. Iran has diverted enormous amounts of money from its own people to support Hezbollah, Hamas and other Middle Eastern groups that oppose Israel.

Most of Hezbollah’s domestic enemies remained cautiously silent on Saturday. But in Martyrs’ Square in downtown Beirut, a young man walked past a group of displaced people – many of them Hezbollah supporters – and shouted: “Ya Sayyid, Qus Ummak“, an obscene insult that roughly translates to “Nasrallah, fuck your mother.” In response, there was immediate angry shouting and someone stormed out of the crowd at a nearby mosque and shot the young man in the leg.

This episode, reported to me by several witnesses, frightened the displaced people in the square, although the prevailing emotion was still shock and sadness.

Nasrallah “was a great man; There was no one like him,” a 41-year-old woman named Zahra told me. “We are afraid of where things will go now. And we could be bombed on the street.”

Zahra’s face was wet with tears. Dressed in a black and white tracksuit and a headscarf, she sat next to her two sisters. They had come early in the morning from Dahieh – the southern suburb where Hezbollah is based and where the bombs had fallen. No one was willing to give them a ride, and they ended up paying a taxi driver 4 million Lebanese lire – more than $44 – for the 15-minute ride to Martyrs’ Square. Petty war profits are widespread in Lebanon.

As Zahra spoke, her sister Munayda regularly interrupted her and repeated: “I don’t believe it. I don’t think he’s dead.”

Many other people said the same thing, on the streets and on social media. An insidious consequence of Israel’s years-long campaign of technology-enabled attacks on Lebanon – including the detonation of thousands of booby-trapped electronic pagers earlier this month – is that no one trusts their phones. People have become less connected, more suspicious and more fearful.

The bomb that killed Nasrallah also destroyed half a dozen residential towers and is believed to have killed large numbers of people. But information was slow to reach the public over the weekend because Hezbollah sealed off the area for security reasons.

One of the displaced people in Martyrs’ Square, a 39-year-old Palestinian woman named Najah who had been living in Dahieh, told me she had barely survived the bombing. She was at home with her three children when the series of bombs hit just before sunset, and “it felt like the rockets were right over our heads,” she said. She fell to the ground, she said, expecting another bomb to kill her and her children. When that didn’t happen, she gathered the children and ran outside. “It was chaos. The streets were full of people; We ran,” she said. “The sound of the bombs was still in my head.”

Like many others, Najah wept openly when she spoke of Nasrallah. “He defends us as Palestinians,” she said. “He didn’t accept injustice.”

Nasrallah may have presented himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause, but he has also turned much of his country into a base for the Islamic Republic of Iran. And he was willing to sacrifice anyone who stood in his way, including a number of prominent Lebanese politicians and journalists. In 2005, a huge car bomb on the coast of Beirut killed former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 other people. A team of international investigators concluded that Hezbollah members were responsible for the bombing.

Still, Nasrallah was admired even by some who resented the way he held the Lebanese state hostage for decades. He had charm, unlike so many other leaders in a region full of pot-bellied Islamist idiots and brutal dictators. He was known throughout the Arab world for delivering elegantly composed speeches that began calmly and then progressed to vehement finger-wagging. Along the way he could be funny, even mischievous, as he tirelessly promoted hatred and violence. And he had a flair for the dramatic.

During the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, the movement timed the release of one of its pre-recorded statements to coincide with a rocket attack on one of the Israeli ships. “The surprises I promised you will begin now,” Nasrallah told his audience. “Now, in the middle of the sea, opposite Beirut, is the Israeli warship… see how it burns.”

All acknowledged the sincerity of Nasrallah’s zeal, even if the consequences – a long series of destructive wars and terrorist bombings – were horrific. In 1997, Nasrallah gave a speech just hours after his eldest son was killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers. He didn’t think much about his son’s death, but his face showed the struggle to hide his emotions as he spoke. “My son, the martyr, chose this path of his own will,” he said.

Whether that was true of his son or not, it was certainly true of Nasrallah.