Stories about love

Below is a translation of the excerpt from the episode of Ástarsögur (Stories about love) on the Icelandic National Broadcaster, Channel 1 (Rás 1) where I told the story about my father and his childhood friends, who I came to know late in life and appreciated highly. The episode was made by radio host Anna Marsibil Clausen and the excerpt was written by Júlía Margrét Einarsdóttir. I thank Anna Marsý for her interest in the story (which she saw me discuss on Twitter) and Júlía for putting the excerpt into words, which I can now share with those who don’t have access to the radio show or the Icelandic language.

When Miriam went with her father on their last trip to his homeland Egypt, they knew he was dying. They had an invaluable meeting with her father's old friends from school, where they both shed tears of sorrow and joy. Miriam was still in Egypt when her father passed away but made friends in her father's group of friends and later enjoyed hearing stories about him.

When people lose a loved one, memories often take on a new meaning. This is accompanied by a painful knowledge that no more memories will be created, unless we get access to other people’s memories of the person: Memories of moments we perhaps didn’t even know about.

Miriam Petra Awad's father, Ahmed Hafez Awad, was born on February 26, 1942 in Cairo, Egypt. He was the son of dr. Salah Eldin Hafez Awad and Afaf Abdel Azim Lotfy. Ahmed moved to Iceland in 1965, aged 23, and lived in Iceland ever since. "He was a very ambitious trout and char fisherman and that was, according to him, one of the main reasons why he stayed in Iceland, apart from his children," says Miriam in a conversation with Anna Marsibil Clausen in Ástarsögur on Channel 1 about her father. "My father died of cancer in 2015."

He enjoyed to chat and connect with people

Miriam and her father’s relationship became better later in life. "When I was a teenager, I felt I got to know him better as a person. He was stubborn and very smart but had not been educated as much as I’m sure he wanted, I’m positive he had ADHD", says Miriam. Ahmed found it easy to talk to people and made friends wherever he went. "He was really good at chatting with people, just out of the blue. We often went for car rides, to the flea market, and went to get ice cream or a hot dog. Then we would always meet someone he knew.” Ahmed chatted with those people for a while and after the conversation Miriam would ask, “Who was that? and it could be someone who worked with him long before my time,” she says.

Indirect generational pressure from grandfather

Ahmed found it easy to impress and make people happy. "He had a big personality, but he also had a very interesting life," says Miriam. Her grandfather, dr. Salah, was Egypt's first haematologist and put quite some pressure on his eldest son to do well. "I don’t think my father ever resolved that pressure. I have often thought about many things in my upbringing, like the pressure of how I should be good at studying, that perhaps was indirectly a generational pressure from my grandfather."

The cancer had spread all over and it was the last chance to say goodbye to Egypt

Miriam went on a few trips with her father after she became a young adult and they got along well. "We became quite close and went to Egypt together twice after I got older," she says. In 2015, Miriam decided to go to Egypt, stay there for three months and learn Arabic. After the trip was planned however, just before Christmas 2014, her father was diagnosed with cancer again, having overcome it two years earlier. Now there was no victory in sight. "Then the cancer had spread all over his body," Miriam says.

Ahmed talked to his doctor who encouraged him to join her on the trip if he wanted the opportunity to go and say goodbye to his family there for the last time. So he decided to go with his daughter. They set off, and to begin with, the cancer and the diagnosis cast a shadow over the journey. "It was imminent, glooming over our journey, but when we got out in the sun and met our family, he was very excited to see everyone."

Reunion on Ahmed’s birthday

Ahmed had his birthday during the trip and the following day the former students from his primary school decided to gather for a reunion. These reunions are held by that group regularly either in Cairo or London, helping them to continue meeting since every year for decades. Ahmed had often talked nicely about his elementary school friends with Miriam and they decided to take the opportunity to see them together. "I remembered that this date had been chosen with the intention that he would be able to join, because they knew he was in Egypt."

This particular reunion was in a way in honour of her father. "It was a very emotional moment when they brought out a birthday cake and were singing the birthday song in Arabic. The words mean something like: may your health be good every year or may your year be sweet. For a person who knows they don’t have much left, it's probably very difficult to listen to the song, "says Miriam.

But the tears of sorrow soon gave way to joy as someone began to play the piano and people started to dance a little bit. "It was definitely important to meet the family, but I think the fact that this event took place and that he met these old friends, was what made the entire trip for him," says Miriam.

No political quarrels, just friendship among the kids

The school where Ahmed met his classmates was called The English School Cairo and was a primary school. Her father went to the school from 1948-56, until the age of fourteen when he was sent to England to continue his studies. Miriam says it is clear that this group, despite their young age, had been incredibly close, as those who are still alive keep in touch and meet regularly. The school worked under an English system and the children wore British school uniforms. It was multinational, with students from Egypt, the United Kingdom, France, Armenia, Italy, Lebanon, Greece, and Syria.

Although there were political quarrels between many of these nations, the kids did not let it get to them. "For them, they were just kids," says Miriam. "Politically, it was a difficult atmosphere and it was tense between Britain, France and Egypt around the Suez War etc, but they were not bothered by it. They were just friends at school."

Imagines her father running as a six-year-old child up to his mother

Ahmed’s trip was shorter than Miriam’s. He left Egypt before her to continue his medication back in Iceland. Miriam was still in Egypt when the call came that her father had passed away. "[It was April, but] We had been told that he had more months left, until about the end of summer," said Miriam, who found it both difficult and good to be in the arms of her Egyptian family when the news broke.

When her father died, she went for a walk alone near her father's childhood home. "I went to his apartment building and put flowers on the steps. I walked up the stairs, stood on the steps and looked at the door to his old apartment. I just said to myself ah, I remember this door, my grandmother lived here and was flooded with memories" Miriam recalls. At some point, she was interrupted by a man cleaning the stairwell. She explained to him in broken Arabic that her father had lived there, which was why she was standing there, and so he let her stay and kept cleaning. She continued her journey.

At this moment I felt very connected to him and I have always thought that if I could picture him in any way as he has passed, I see hims as a little six year old boy running up the stairs to his mother. That was what he dreamed of doing when he died. Going back to his mom.

—

"I felt like he had led me there"

Her father loved his mother dearly. Miriam describes her grandmother as a warm, cheerful and kind-hearted woman who loved the latest fashion from Paris. "She spent a lot of money on clothes which probably gave my grandfather a few grey hairs, but she was always very chic" says Miriam about her grandmother.

She has a video of herself visiting her grandparents, where she was only one year old, "where my grandma says in Icelandic: “kiss grandma as well” (kyssa amma líka). By then she had already learnt to say that in Icelandic," she says. Towards the end of his life, Ahmed talked a lot about his mother and told Miriam’s brother numerous times that he had visions of her in his room. "I have always imagined that he wanted to go home to his mother's house as a little boy."

Miriam was walking around her father's neighbourhood, admiring the flowers and thinking of her father, when all of a sudden she found herself standing in front of the old school. "I felt like he might have led me there," says Miriam. "I knew the school was somewhere close, but I didn’t know exactly where it was located”.

Invited to attend the meeting in London

Memories of the reunion are still vivid and Miriam often recalls them. "I get really emotional and grateful to be able to watch videos I took on the phone of my dad dancing with his friends. I ended up adding a lot of his friends on Facebook," says Miriam, who regularly receives messages from her father's old friends. At some point, she decided to send a message to the organisers of the reunion and thank them:

I just wanted to thank you so much for what you did for my dad and I think it's great that you as a group meet so regularly. It's really inspiring that you're meeting after being together in elementary school, after all these years.

"I just wanted to tell them this," says Miriam.

She moved to Paris in 2019 and while living there she received a message from Nadia, one of the organisers from the group, who invited her to attend the next reunion in London as her father's representative. Miriam accepted the invitation. "Then it occurred to me to hit two birds with one stone and meet my friend Ásta, who lived in Oxford at the time. She ended up joining me to the reunion." "In the opening speech from Anthony, the man in charge of the organisation of the reunion along with Nadia, they mentioned that I am a kind of guest of honour, as the daughter of Ahmed."

"I stood there with tears in my eyes"

Miriam was asked to stand up, which she did. Everyone started talking about her father. "I just started to cry. It seemed to matter so much to them that I had come. They were so grateful but I was just thinking: You invited me, I’m the one who is the most grateful," says Miriam. "I stood there with tears in my eyes and needed a moment to just gather my emotions"

Her father had a unique relationship with this group and often spoke of the time they went to school together. "In Egypt, there is a great deal of nostalgia for these years. These are the golden years of Egyptian culture in the 20th century." Egyptian filmmaking was flourishing, the Egyptian currency was on a par with the British pound, "says Miriam. His father emigrated from Egypt at this time and these are the memories he held on to. "He may have found it difficult to go back and see all the poverty and everything that had changed. I grew up with these stories. "

Prankster who put a thumbtack in the teacher's chair

During the reunion lunch, many wanted to talk to Miriam and a woman named Camelia Malash came to her, hugged her and said, "Your dad was so lovely, he was such a great prankster," says Miriam. Her and Ahmed had something in common that made them get along extremely well - they were, as she put it, both naughty. "He was the type who put thumbtacks in the teacher's chair while the others sat and were still - which was perhaps one of the things that got on my grandfather's nerves," says Miriam.

Miriam returned back to Paris and a few weeks later she received a message from Camelia. She wanted to meet her, because she was on her way to Paris herself. Miriam met Camelia in Paris and they went to see the Sacré Cœur together. They walked around the church, Camelia lit a candle and said a prayer. Then they went to the gift shop where Camelia bought prayer beads and more souvenirs for her friends back home in Egypt. “Camelia was a Muslim but she said: Miriam, you know it really is just the same god. It does not matter what kind of building you are in, you can always pray to him.” Miriam herself believes in the good in people and isn’t particularly religious. "But that was exactly what Dad had said and resonated with the atmosphere I grew up in."

News that Camelia had also passed away

They went out to eat together and ordered a French lunch. Camelia ate only a little of her food but had some wine and joked around. She called Miriam her niece and the servant mentioned how much they looked alike. "She thought it was really funny and winked at me," says Miriam. When they said goodbye, Camelia gave Miriam a pink sweater with a lace pattern and some more beautiful things she had chosen for her. After that, they exchanged messages regularly, and Camelia always addressed Miriam as her “dear child”. Miriam thought that when she would be back in Cairo she would be the one to invite Camelia to lunch. Unfortunately, she was never given the opportunity to do so. "A few months ago, I received a message from Nadia informing me that Camelia had passed away. I just started crying," says Miriam.

A window into Dad's childhood suddenly closed

She says that her own reaction to Camelia's death and how much she loved her came as a surprise because they knew each other for a short time. "I may not have expected that the few moments I had with this woman would make me take her death so close to my heart, but it is testament to the great care Camelia had for a person who was the daughter of a man she was in primary school with," says Miriam. "She was not even in the same class as him, they were just friends like everyone in this group."

Miriam misses her father - but she also misses Camelia. "It's like she was a window into this time, dad's childhood, that I can no longer ask him about. That window was suddenly closed. I just sat at the computer speechless with tears in my eyes."