Early on Saturday morning, on the 20th of September 2008, Ahmed Abou Alfa drew his last breath. Ahmed was by relation my father’s uncle, however his actions towards myself and towards my father were not the actions of an uncle, they were the actions of a father and a grandfather. For all intents and purposes I lost my real grandfather.

My dad was the first child between the brothers and as such was treated differently because their own children wouldn’t arrive for many more years down the line, so they all saw him as their own son; however no one more so than Ahmed. His love for my father was then directly shown to me in every occasion that I ever saw him.

Not a visit would go by that the entire family wouldn’t be invited to his house. The dining table layered with food for 15 people or something. In my mind his dining table still remains to be the biggest dining table in the world, in part because of it’s size but in most cases because of the superhuman effort that him and his wife Safiyi would go through for us.

My last memory of my grandfather Ahmed was sitting at the last dinner 4 years ago. I was sitting there complaining about the fact that I didn’t like my surname. It meant nothing in Arabic and it sounded stupid in other languages. To this, he gave me a little bit of a chuckle and he said to me

You're not the only one. My sister, your aunt, used to hate the name as well

From there he basically started telling me the family history from 400 years ago or something. This was the entire family tree as though he had lived with these people. He knew names, he knew dates, he knew nicknames he knew the reasons and the people involved. He knew all of this and soo much more. A fountain of stories, interesting stories, and he always had a talent at conveying these stories to people. His son Zaher, sat next to me during this 2 hour session. I asked him if he’d heard this story before, to which he replied that this was the first time that he’d heard any of this. If I’m going to be selfish about this I would say that one of the biggest shames of his passing are all the stories that will go untold, all the stories that will go lost in the sands of time.

The last time I talked to him on the phone was also the last time I ever spoke to him. The most softly spoken pleasant human being I’ve ever had the pleasure to have known. Never had I ever heard his voice in anger, never had I heard him being unkind or say an unkind word about anyone. His face was the epitomy of calm and he always had this twinkle in his eye that showed great kindness and interest in anything that anyone told him, I will miss that and so much more.

This has been the hardest post I’ve ever written in the 5 years of blogging. Everytime I write a sentence I’ve been breaking down into tears but I feel that it is important to write these thoughts down, it’s the only way for me.

Ahmed Abou Alfa , a true Historian and the Last Gentleman of Saida.