For readers curious about my recent absence, my dear father Dr. Sudad Jawad Al-Tamimi passed away on the morning of 31 October after a battle with cancer. Here I will talk about his own life and work and our relationship. He was a truly great person to have as a father and I miss him greatly.
My father was born in Baghdad in 1954, one of six children. His own father, who originated from the Suhayl clan of the Banu Tamim (hence, al-Tamimi), worked in the Ministry of Transportation, while his mother originated from the locality of al-Majar al-Kabir in Maysan province and had moved to Baghdad at a young age following the death of her father, who had worked in agriculture. According to what my father had mentioned, his own paternal grandfather knew Nuri al-Sa'id (a key political figure in Iraq when the country was a monarchy, which was abolished in 1958), had worked on the development of the railway system when the British were still present, and acquired knowledge of multiple languages. A journalist had once asked me whether my family were ‘aristocrats’ in Iraq. I would rather say they were middle to upper-middle class.
My father’s parents were keen for my father and his siblings to receive a good education and do well in school in order to have the best opportunities in life. For his high school, my father was fortunate enough to go to Baghdad College, which was located in central Baghdad and was run by American Jesuits. An Internet search will show that quite a number of Iraq’s elites- whether at the intellectual or political level- attended Baghdad College. I remember in my younger years that my father spoke fondly of his years there and the Jesuits who worked at the school, as well as experiences playing American sports like baseball. It was also there that my father first acquired working knowledge of English.
My father had initially wanted to study mathematics and statistics at university, but his own father persuaded him to study medicine in order to secure a viable career. During his first years at medical school in Baghdad, my father struggled with his studies, but getting to know my mother inspired him to do better. My mother’s own family had not approved of the relationship, but my parents ended up marrying secretly out of love for each other, and then one day, after my mother’s family they had come to accept the relationship and the prospect of their getting engaged, my father simply mentioned to them that he and my mother were already married. After graduation and a period of compulsory military service, my father eventually went to the UK for further study and ended up becoming a consultant psychiatrist. He had three sons: the eldest born in 1990, the middle child (myself) born in 1992, and the youngest in 1996.
While I did not ask my father too much about his work life, I do know he made many patients happy through the care he provided for them and his work colleagues thought highly of him. He also made an occasional English-language media appearance in commenting on matters pertaining to psychiatry (see this BBC article from 2012, for example). Later in his life, he began writing on psychiatry and medical and cultural matters in Arabic, and he became renowned in the realm of psychiatry in the Arab world for his ability to write in clear, eloquent Arabic and to translate medical concepts and terms into Arabic. While I am no medical specialist, I looked to my father as a model for reading and writing in literary Arabic and was keen for him to read my writings and translations of materials into literary Arabic in order to get his opinion on my style and clarity.
As we grew up, our father naturally wanted us to do well in school and had high hopes and expectations for us. My mother recalls that during my earliest years of schooling, some of the teachers thought I might have a learning disability, only for my father to angrily rebuke them and tell them I was a ‘gifted’ child. I would not make any pretensions to having been a ‘gifted’ child, and sometimes my father would rebuke me quite harshly if I did not do well on a test or exam, especially in my younger years. In truth, it took me some years to find my academic footing and excel at school. Even so, my father was ultimately proven right in his hopes and expectations regarding my ability to succeed academically.
It is also the case that my father was concerned about our future standard of living and thought that the only way to secure a viable future was for us to follow in his footsteps and become doctors. He certainly was skeptical about the prospect of my doing a degree in Classics (subsequently Classics with Oriental Studies) at Oxford University, and I remember him telling me in this context about how his own father had urged him to study medicine. Like my mother, he was concerned that the degree course I sought to undertake was not vocational and thus would not lead to a secure, well-paying job that could comfortably support a family. But in the end he accepted that I myself had to figure out my own intellectual and professional path going forward and what would make me happy, and in this regard he chose to support me unconditionally. In this respect, one cannot ask for more from a father.
This unconditional support was also true of my personal life. If you had asked him only a few years ago whether he would have envisioned his son getting married in Syria and living there with his wife, he would have probably thought the whole thing was insane. But in fact, after he learned of my decision to go to Syria and get engaged to my wife (whom I would marry three months after our engagement), he welcomed my wife with open arms into our family, proudly and happily calling my wife his daughter, and we never had any doubt that he loved my wife in this way, admiring her manners, education and cultural refinement. He also felt joy about the fact that I was the first among his children to get married- something he had always thought would happen but which I myself did not take seriously for a long time.
Unfortunately, it was also during this period that we came to learn of his terminal cancer. He was supposed to come to my wedding in Syria in June 2025, but he mentioned that ‘overwhelming circumstances’ had prevented him from going. He had been suffering from severe back pains at the time, but only later that month was it diagnosed as metastatic prostate cancer. Understandably though, out of a desire to see my wife and myself enjoy our first few months together, neither my father nor mother initially told us of the diagnosis. I only learned about in October of that year while visiting some more distant relatives of my father in Baghdad.
Although the treatment team suggested that my father might be able to live several more years, this prognosis was on the assumption that he would respond very well to all forms of treatment offered to contain and control the cancer. While he responded well to the first line of treatment offered, his condition deteriorated over the last year of his life, with only a brief respite offered in the form of a course of radiotherapy that he could not complete after falling and suffering a fracture, and during the latter half of last month he was in palliative care. The last time I saw him in person was just over a month before his death, when I made a surprise visit to the family home during a work trip. At that point he was still in some health to have regular interactions and I am glad that we took one last photo together to preserve as a memory. The last time I spoke to him was the day before he died, as I video-called virtually everyday during that last period to see how he was doing. I am so glad that I was able to tell him how much I loved him in those last calls, and that he was still able to recognise my face and voice till the very end.
Our last photo together (my mother was in the portrait too but out of privacy I have cropped the photo).
As one reflects on a person’s life, there is always space for regrets and things you wish had happened while that person was still alive. In my father’s case, I do regret that he was not able to attend my wedding or meet my wife in person. I also thought it sad that in his later years he only visited Iraq once- in 2019 we went on a brief visit to Baghdad, which he thought would be the last time he would see the country again. Although at one point, seemingly in a bid to dissuade me from doing work in Iraq and probably as part of a complicated set of emotions that come with exile, he claimed to me that he had no ‘emotional attachment’ to Iraq, the truth was that deep down he did love and miss his homeland, as became clear when he cried in a video call with my wife while my wife and I were visiting the country in the fall of 2025, wishing he could be there with us.
Yet I feel that regrets can take endless permutations. I prefer instead to focus on the more positive side of what he lived long enough to witness in his lifetime. I am happy he lived long enough to see me graduate from Oxford University and eventually obtain a PhD. I am happy he lived long enough to see me become a published author with academic university presses. Indeed, my father was very much interested in Islamic history and interactions between the Christian and Islamic worlds, and as such he always enjoyed reading my translations and studies of medieval Latin literature about Islam and chronicles and historiography from medieval Spain. Indeed, while he was receiving chemotherapy earlier this year, he took the opportunity to read my translation and study of Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada’s Minor Histories (including his ‘History of the Arabs’) and I could tell he took great pleasure in doing so and was not merely trying to flatter me in a bid to show emotional support for his son. Moreover, I am happy he lived long enough to know in his final days that Brepols had accepted my translation and study of the Chronica Naierensis (a late 12th/early 13th century chronicle from Spain) for publication and that I would be continuing with my academic work even after his passing.
But above all, I am happy that he lived long enough to see me and my elder brother get married, and that his final wish to become a grandfather was fulfilled. We announced my wife’s pregnancy to him on his birthday in April of this year, and while we had been expecting the baby to arrive in the middle of last month, she was in fact born around six weeks earlier. It was heart-warming to see my father feel such great joy and consolation in photos and videos of his granddaughter, and to see and speak to her on video camera, even though his desire to hold her in his arms was never fulfilled.
In short, I know that he lived a very happy and good life and was immensely proud of what his children achieved while he was alive, and that is how I wish to remember him. He would not want us to be wallowing in the paralysis of grief. Rather, just as he dedicated his professional life to ensuring that his patients would get better and continue with their lives, so he would also want us to continue on the paths we have started and live happy and fulfilling lives. I will always remember him and will continue to ensure his memory lives on by dedicating my future book projects to him.
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Appendix: some trivia about my father
Favourite foods:
- Fish and chips, Iraqi kebab and shawarma (known as ‘gass’ in Iraq), curry, McDonald’s.
Hobbies:
- Reading and collecting books. On one occasion, he rebuked me over my ‘compulsion’ to buy books and admitted he bought huge numbers of books in his younger years. His reading interests were hugely diverse: in his youth, for example, he would read the works of Sayyid Qutb (whose works were banned in Iraq at the time), and while he did not identify with Qutb’s revolutionary ideas, he did admire what he saw as Qutb’s eloquence and courage, given his execution in 1966. Later, he would read authors ranging from Bernard Lewis (whom he liked as a medieval historian even while not necessarily agreeing with Lewis’ modern political commentary) to Karen Armstrong (some of whose early memoir and history works he liked, though he found her later output uninteresting and was probably influenced by my dislike of her).
From my father’s collection of books
More from his book collection, including some works of my own.
- Collecting model aeroplanes. I believed this developed out of going on trips for medical conferences.
- Going to the cinema. He particularly liked to buy and eat salted popcorn from the cinema as part of the experience.
- Playing the piano/keyboard.
Favourite football team:
- Arsenal. Among the more trivial things I am happy he lived long enough to witness was Arsenal winning the Premier League in the 2025-2026 season after a drought that lasted more than 20 years.
Sorry for your loss, Aymen. May his soul rest in peace
This is a wonderful tribute to your father. Thank you for sharing about him. He raised a good man in you Aymenn. May he rest in peace.