Mohammed Farid Saydjari or just Uncle Farid to my brothers and me. Farid went by his middle name. He was born in Jisr al-Shughur in Syria in 1933 and was my mother’s younger brother or the baby of the family, as Mom used to say. He had lived for a time in Germany and studied medicine. Farid was fluent in German and French, as well as his native Arabic.
He moved to the United States in the early 1970s and lived in New Jersey, where he worked as a pathologist. I recall he had visited us when we lived in Oklahoma, but I don’t remember much of him from that time. My introduction to Farid was primarily when we lived in upstate New York. We would visit him in his apartment on the Jersey shore, and he would visit us in Liberty, NY.
He was a mischievous sort of fellow with a ready smile and a penchant for not taking himself, or anyone else for that matter, too seriously. He loved to play pranks. Our very own family Loki. He also liked to poke the bear, in this case, my father, who he considered far too dour. He would say wild and incongruous things to get a rise out of Dad. My brothers and I would always laugh at my father’s indignant responses.
“Why does your son (referring to my older brother Razi) not have a girlfriend?” said Farid to my father Mohamed one day.
“My son is deep in his studies and does not need a girlfriend.”, replied Mohamed.
“An 18-year-old needs a girlfriend.”, replied Farid.
“He is sublimating.”, was Mohamed’s reply.
Without skipping a beat, Farid retorted, “He is masturbating.”, thoroughly enjoying the rhyme
with the word sublimating but fiercely inserting the harsh reality into Mohamed’s mind.
In many ways, he was a polar opposite of my mother, his older sister, and she would blush at his antics. He smoked too much and drank even more. It would be his undoing, but all we say was a happy go lucky bon vivant with occasional bouts of depression.
He was a student of both nihilism, existentialism, and hedonism, quoting Nietchzie and Camus in the same breath. He eventually moved to Kentucky and became a general Practioner. During visits with Uncle Farid, he would offer us beer and cigarettes even as a 12-year-old in my case. He would poke me in the ribs when a pretty girl walked by and offer to “buy me a girlfriend” with a wry grin.
Eventually, he married and settled down in Kentucky to raise a family with a devoutly Christian woman who intended to domesticate him. Alas, Farid passed away at a young age from a heart attack before she could accomplish that particular Sisyphean task. No doubt, a victim of smoking and alcohol, and I am sure with few regrets as that is how he led his life—cheers Uncle, I love you and sorely miss you.