A tribute to my father
I really miss my late dad, Soheil, and also envy him in many ways. This year will mark 12 years since he passed away from terminal cancer. He was a good man. Old school. Tough as nails but also soft as cotton balls. My mother used to joke and call him "Atatürk with a gentle touch" because in matters of work and the household he was a rigid, no-nonsense, military-style disciplinarian from heck! We used to clash alot - and I mean ALOT!
He met my mother when he was only 18 years old at a summer school in Graz, Austria during 1967. He was there on an all-expenses paid university scholarship by the Iranian government while she was there because my late grandfather ran a successful carpet and textile business between Vienna, Istanbul and Tehran. My mother was only 16 at the time. It was love at first sight and they never separated from one another until he passed away from 4th-stage cancer in a hospital in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, in early February 2012, just 6 weeks shy of my Nuriel's birthday in Berlin, Germany. So Nuri never got to meet her grandfather, "Atatürk with a gentle touch".
Compared to my generation and the generation that is now emerging, where relationships are concerned, my parents had it really good and very easy. They never experienced loneliness with each other, and never understood what it even meant. Each of them were each other's first love. They met at a relatively young age and married a few years later, raised a family of three kids together, lived on four continents together, worked and built their lives together through it all during 41 years of marriage, and only ever separated when one of them finally died: my dad. They never strayed or cheated on one another. They loved one another to the very last moment and were loyal to each other to the very end.
During his life with my mother, my dad was focused
like no one I have ever met before, worked hard and like a machine, and all for
her. This is how much he loved her. But eventually he worked himself into an
early grave. Literally, his love for my mother and the drive to maintain the
best possible life for her killed him. Yet this is the price he paid for love,
and, as tragic as things became in the end for him, he paid it willingly
because he loved her beyond everything - including his own children. In my father,
I learned what the meaning of chivalry (futūwwa, javānmardī) and serving the
epiphany of the Eternal Woman on earth is all about. Literally, my mother was my father's true religion.
The Ancestors must have really liked this man a lot to give him the kind of life that many - including myself - only envy, i.e. the life with the woman of his dreams until death did them apart. Despite numerous economic and political difficulties at various times (like the Iran of the Islamic Revolution or the Global Financial Crisis of 2008), he also always used to say to me that "the meaning of my life is your mother! Find someone like her like I did, and everything else will just be detail you manage over a lifetime." I never did manage to find someone similar to who he did in my mum. But, then again, my mother is a unique woman in her own right.
He was only 62.
May he rest in peace under the shade of the Light of lights of the Supreme Mother's embrace forever and ever! Amen!
روحش شاد و يادش گرامى
