When he tried to be a father and a mother

Kamal Ruhayyim was a father of strong character, firm in raising his children, stern when he judged that a situation called for sternness. For all his well-known kindness of heart and gentle company, at home he carried the authority of a father who made no compromises over principles and upbringing.

Dr Suzan Salem, his wife and his beloved, completed this side of his character.

When the father was hard, the mother gathered the children in. When he settled a matter firmly, she softened hearts and soothed feelings. Between Kamal's firmness and Suzan's tenderness, the children grew up in a home that knew each parent's role and each one's own way of expressing love.

Then Suzan was gone.

Her passing was not merely the loss of a wife and partner in life. It was a deep breaking for a man who had loved her intensely and lived with her through long years of closeness and affection.

And here began a change his children had not expected.

The man they had known as strong and resolute, accustomed to carrying great responsibilities and making hard decisions, found himself facing a responsibility of an entirely different kind.

He had to be a father and a mother at the same time.

For the first time, Ahmed saw his father at a loss, trying to learn how to play the role that Suzan had played by instinct and tenderness.

It was not easy for him.

He was the father who had always been the one to stand firm, while the mother had been the children's refuge whenever they needed comfort and holding. Suddenly he had to bring the two opposites together: to keep his strength, and to learn how to make up for some of the tenderness that had departed with her.

Kamal put an enormous effort into this.

He began to change, to look for another way of being with his children. Little by little a side of his character emerged that Ahmed had never known so clearly before.

The father's strength did not vanish, and his principles did not alter, but he began trying to give his children both what he had always given them and what their mother had given them too.

And, as Ahmed sees it, he succeeded in this difficult role.

It was perhaps one of the greatest human challenges Kamal Ruhayyim ever faced: to carry on living without the woman he loved, to bear the pain of her absence, and at the same time to try to fill something of the void she had left in his children's lives.

Kamal did not become a different person after Suzan's passing. Rather, her loss revealed a deep tenderness that his heart had to learn how to show in a new way.

As told by his son Ahmed