Writing has never been more difficult than it is now, for this is the time I have dreaded most throughout my entire life, the time when I have to bid my beloved father farewell. was not an ordinary man who would enter or leave anyone's life easily. Instead, he was a man who left his mark on the lives of anyone he met or who worked closely with him, let alone someone who was related to him. I cannot remember anyone who had met him not being impressed by his kindness and his generosity of spirit and by his genius for financial and managerial matters. The secret, he once told me, was love. He lived life with a passion for humanity, pledging himself to try to help the weak and the needy, not out of a desire for recognition or for fame, but rather out of the love of God who never let him down and always rewarded him. His life was a series of challenges that God threw in his way in the confidence that they would only make him stronger and would mould his character to serve the role for which God had created him. As a child, he lost his own father at the age of seven, and, being the youngest of four siblings, he became the pride of his mother's heart. It was her compassion and sacrifice that later caused him to place every mother on a high pedestal. He always had a soft heart for children, especially orphans, for he surely understood their pain. He had a brilliant academic career, graduating with honours from the Faculty of Commerce. He was the first man in Egypt to gain a Masters degree in accountancy. His professional life started at the masani' harbeya, or military factories, and he was then headhunted in the middle of the 1960s by Mohamed Fouad Ibrahim, general manager of Al-Ahram at the time, to become head of the organisation's commercial department. He later became head of the audit unit, and in the early 1970s he was appointed financial controller of Al-Ahram, a post he held until 2002 when illness caused him to resign. As a servant of Al-Ahram for over three decades, my father had a special passion for the organisation and its people, causing him to put all his financial skills at the service of Al-Ahram until it became the major news organisation it has become today. His dream was that all Al-Ahram employees would be able to lead a decent life and not feel deprived of life's joy. God rewarded him with the gift of knowing how to turn sand into gold. Al-Ahram established an employees fund in 1980, the idea being first mooted in 1975 when the then chairman of the board, Abdallah Abdel-Bari, proposed setting up a special policy that would provide employees with various benefits. The idea expanded to become a fund that would serve the organisation's employees in various fields, medical, cultural, sporting, religious, and recreational, and would provide a lump sum upon retirement. It also further included an emergency fund to help employees in crisis situations. The most-loved section of the fund became that part of it that allows employees of the organisation to buy various goods, from clothes to cars, on an instalment plan that does not charge interest for the first two years. My father's devotion for Al-Ahram made it almost into part of his being. He always viewed the organisation as the best there was, and he worked tirelessly to keep it at the top. He worked in the knowledge that if he put everything he had into Al-Ahram, the organisation would reward him in return. This, he once told me, was a view shared by all his colleagues, and it was the secret of the organisation's success and excellence. As a father, he spared no efforts to make my sister's and my life as smooth as possible and to provide us with all the love, guidance and support any parent can give. 's daughters were his soft spot, people would say, those to whom he could never say no. Despite his many professional obligations, he was always closely involved in our day-to-day lives, and he was always there when we needed him. My father and I had a very special bond. We knew each other well, and we never hit a wrong note. I would never refuse him anything, and he would never ask me to do anything he knew I did not wish to do -- apart perhaps from drinking the cup of milk a day that he wanted me to drink as a child. He always respected my independence and taught me that freedom of choice is in its own way an obligation to respect one's responsibilities and commitments. He admired my own passion for journalism and was proud that I had pursued it at Al-Ahram Weekly, one of Al-Ahram's publications. I always strived to keep up with his generous spirit and strong faith. His success and determination always impressed me, and his acceptance and tolerance of a sickness that kept him at home for years left me with many lessons to remember. He fought his sickness bravely, as he did with the other battles in his life. He silently endured pain, facing it with grace and confidence in God's mercy. It took me years to grasp how, despite these challenges, he never lost his smile and managed to crack jokes and listen to the complaints of others on matters that paled before his own ordeal. When I asked him where he got his strength from, he told me "Allah". I only really grasped this when he passed away, for I would never have imagined being able to survive his loss had it not been for God's mercy. Today, as I pay tribute to my father in the confidence that he is in a better place, I want to tell him that I love him, miss him, and wish him the best birthday ever now that he is in heaven. By Jailan Halawi
