Unforgettable...That's what you are

Al-Ahram Weekly pays special tribute to the founding Editor-in-Chief Hosny Guindy on the occasion of the second anniversary of his departure

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And that's what you will always be. Painful are my days without you. I wonder how I have tolerated such pain for two solid, cruel years and God only knows for how many more to come. I have turned our home into a shrine to you. Your photos are everywhere, our belongings still in the same places you chose with such unerring taste.

I talk to you and I know you listen. I sense your presence, comforting me in lonely, desperate moments. Do I miss you? More than words can ever express. Do I need you? More than every beat of my heart. I keep wondering who invented this heresy that grief lessens with time. It starts big and grows bigger. My loss is as great as my love for you. I still cannot identify this life I have been living for two years now. I feel I am watching another person, someone I do not recognise.

My life is shared only with you and I need you now to share my grief as we shared everything else. Without you tears and prayers are my only comfort during this lonesome, dreary journey. I cherish the unfailing values you spread with such grace, around your family, colleagues, friends, around every person with whom you dealt. Love, affection, compassion, understanding, self denial and containment were the essence of your character. And into this mixture you blended that rarest of virtues, true modesty.

People are vulnerable. They are weak. Even the best of them have human frailties and down-to-earth defects. To err is human. But where are your errors? Did you have any? How could you remain so pure in a world so full of contamination? How could your integrity remain so impeccably intact?! At times we thought your tolerance a weakness. Now we realise it was the fortress of all your strength.

So much you gave and so little you expected yet I know no other human being richer in values and virtues. They are values with which you have blessed our daughter, and virtues that will make her forever proud of a father who will always remain... unforgettable.

By Moushira Abdel-Malek