Tribute Wall
Friday
3
June
Visitation
10:00 am - 11:00 am
Friday, June 3, 2016
St. George Greek Orthodox Church
12 Klockner Road
Hamilton, New Jersey, United States
Friday
3
June
Funeral Service
11:00 am
Friday, June 3, 2016
St. George Greek Orthodox Church
1200 Klockner Road
Hamilton, New Jersey, United States
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Tarif Mustafa lit a candle
Monday, February 11, 2019
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I can’t Hold the tears back. It wasn’t fair that your life had to end. I ‘ll always keep you in my heart. Rest In Peace Gheis , I know you are in a better place and one day we shall meet again and never let you go
R
Ramzi posted a condolence
Saturday, October 21, 2017
.. ODE TO MY BEST FRIEND
Beirut, early 1960’s, I was in first grade, I met, for the first time, this little kid in my class. He was wearing shorts, he was shorter than me. His name was Gheith.
That same year, that little fellow, who could outrun me despite his height, became my friend.
At the time, little did I know how lucky I was.
We went to the same school for years to come. We played and laughed a lot together.
Those were the days when even a colored television set was considered a marvel of technology. So, when Gheis and I played together, it was mainly street games or backyard games at the schoolyard, in the streets, in the field behind where Gheis used to live.
I do not know why, ever since we became friends, there was always a sense of enjoyable competition between Gheis and me. From how well we did at school to the games we played together, we always had to declare a winner. I always felt good when I could score a point by winning against such an admirable adversary.
I enjoyed few years of being taller than Gheis till…puberty.
If I recall well, both Gheis and I reached puberty around the same time but with quite different and dramatic transformations.
Puberty made Gheis five inches taller than me and gave him a shoulder width one and half times the size of mine. Damn!!! Puberty made him into a handsome young fellow with an imposing appearance that would later transform him into a charismatic man.
As we always did, we had to declare a winner. This time around, that is the competition pertaining to puberty and its consequences, we agreed that Gheis had obviously won this round. Well…life goes on.
Despite the changes caused by puberty and young adulthood, we still had many similar tastes and opinions. We both felt that our friendship is enduring, we both believed that in order to better and improve ourselves comparisons had to be made, and, most importantly, we both agreed that our competition is still on.
We both liked math, philosophy, Jacques Brel, Bruce Lee, literature…Gheis has always been a very well-read person and I definitely concede a point to him on this element of the ongoing competition.
We both agreed that arrogance is sometimes justifiable, maybe this is why we both liked Beethoven, especially his 9th symphony, Ode to Joy.
One thing that Gheis and I did not share the same taste for was: cars. I did not and still do not care about cars, not at all. Gheis, on the other hand, always loved cars, especially fancy sports cars. I remember once when we were very young kids, someone took Gheis and me to a Lamborghini dealership and convinced the salesman to allow Gheis to sit behind the steering wheel of a Lamborghini Countach. I will never forget the ecstatic look on Gheis’s face that moment.
Spring 1973, I was sixteen years old. I met Lena, the girl/woman who would be my companion for the following forty-two years …and counting.
Before Lena came into the picture the scenario, to me, was: Gheith is my best friend. With Lena in the picture, the scenario immediately became, to both Lena & I: Gheith is our best friend.
Ever since Lena met Gheis she liked him a real lot, why wouldn’t she? How could anyone anyway not like him? I must admit that sometimes, simply because Lena liked Gheis so much, I felt a bit jealous. But if arrogance can be justified then definitely jealousy can be justified too. It is Gheis we are talking about. Anyway, I conceded, one more time, a competition point hoping one day when Gheis meets a girl/woman I will try to even the score and make him feel jealous too.
Gheis and I went to the same school and shared the same classrooms from the age of five or six till the age of eighteen. As far as I can remember it was always the same four students who, year after year, academically would be ranked the best in class. Gheis & I were among this, what I personally call, Elite Club of four best students. Here, maybe, I could finally tackle a subject where I could score a point in my ongoing enjoyable competition with Gheis. Knowing that I was a bit of a nerd, I managed more than often to have a higher ranking at school than Gheis had. So maybe, finally, I do get to score a point. However, truth be told, one should take into consideration that Gheis was so smart and so intelligent that he managed to be in the Elite Club almost effortlessly. More than often he could pull top grades in a subject when he did not even have the textbook for it, sometimes skipping lectures, and with minimal or no studying at all. So, regarding academics, do I still get to keep the score point? Is it still mine or do I have to concede it?
October 1974, it was the start of the last secondary school year. At the end of that academic year every student had to pass the national final exams before he or she could graduate and be admitted to university. That October Gheis and I decided to seriously up the ante: the bet was that one of us, either him or me, would be ranked the first in these final national exams involving thousands of competing students. We agreed that winning the bet would imply a prize: a sports car, specifically, a Datsun 240Z. If Gheis would win the bet and become the first in the national exams I would buy him a 240Z and vice versa if I did. Knowing my indifference to cars and Gheis’s taste in cars you could easily guess who decided on what the prize should be.
Being the nerd I was and taking the bet so very seriously, I studied very hard and moved forward toward attaining the goal and winning the bet. I studied extremely hard during that year to the point where, before reaching the final exams, I was drained, I collapsed, had an accident, had to be hospitalized and could not study as much as I did before. Neither Gheis nor I won the bet that year. However, all along, in the back of my mind, I always knew that had Gheis put half the effort I put into that competition he would have succeeded and would have won the bet. Obviously this is one round of the competition when neither Gheis nor I scored a point. In a way that was a relief because, at the time, neither of us could afford to buy a Datsun 240Z, let alone could afford to buy a simple bike.
Gheis liked fishing a lot, so did I. Rain or shine we could both be fishing together. I remember once the sea was very rough, we were both standing on the rocks by the shore, water up to our waists with five to six foot waves repeatedly hammering us. We had our fishing rods in hand trying to defy nature. The challenge was the means and goal of our joy. A shining moment in time despite the fact that Gheis had to help me, few times, pull myself out of the raging sea. Throughout our friendship, Gheis had also helped me, more than few times, pull myself out of turbulent periods in my life.
Early 1980’s, there she was: Samar, Gheis’s new girlfriend and I am meeting her for the first time. Radiant as she is I liked her instantly and being Gheis’s girlfriend meant that she is, automatically, going to be my friend. Samar liked me too and our friendship grew at a fast pace.
Remember the competition involving jealousy? Remember that in any situation one of us, Gheis or I, had to score a point? Now Gheis had a girlfriend: Samar. Now was the time to even the score concerning this topic. Now was the time to make him feel a bit jealous too. Well it did not work out as I anticipated, it did not work out to my advantage. I knew Samar liked me a lot but the fact that she had Gheis as a boyfriend, someone as charming, as charismatic, as thoughtful, as loving… as Gheis …Do you get my drift? Bottom line I could not score a point on the jealousy front.
Sometimes the friendship between two men is jeopardized or diminished when one of the two men meets a new woman. This was not the case when I met Lena years earlier neither was it the case when Samar came to be in Gheis’s life. Fact is I am grateful to both Samar and Lena for enhancing and reinforcing the friendship between Gheis and me.
Gheis, Samar, Lena and I became very good friends
At one point in time, the four of us were sharing the same apartment and it felt like a unique family of two couples, four friends.
One day Gheis decided to cook soup for the four of us. He went grocery shopping and came back with roughly fifteen pounds of vegetables, produce, meat and poultry. Believe it or not all those ingredients went into one soup for four people. Few hours later we tasted the best soup ever.
You see, Gheis never took any concept for granted. Any concept, any fact, any idea not even the size and ingredients of a simple soup. From feeding his cat Filet Mignon, to watering his Gardenia with sugar syrup, to making soup, to solving a problem, to confronting a situation, he was never mainstream. He always had to analyze and rationalize everything before he would endorse it or implement it. How do I know that? Because what I forgot to mention is that the thing Gheis and I enjoyed the most throughout our friendship, besides scoring points, was: discussing and analyzing.
We talked a lot, I mean a real lot. When we were little kids we talked about stupid little things. The older we got the deeper was the subject matter of our conversations. From religion, to love, to politics, to friendship, to child bearing, to joy, to math, to philosophy, to music, to parenthood, to relations, to marriage, to death … You name it, we discussed it, dissected it and argued about it. We both tried, as was always the case throughout our friendship, to score points. We had a competition always going on, cerebral or otherwise. We talked when we were fishing, eating, having a few drinks, playing backgammon, walking the streets for hours, hiking the mountains … Any time we were together we were talking, discussing and arguing.
Throughout our conversations, Gheis had this talent of using math in his analysis even when the topic of discussion was not a scientific one. To him almost any subject can be better understood and explained using mathematical modelling even when talking about music, emotions, relations...
On the other side of the spectrum, I believe that to Gheis mathematics was not only a scientific discipline, but a beautiful entity with which he shared feelings. I think that, to him, formulas & equations were lyrical. To me, Math was Gheis’s lifelong mistress.
The more we talked the more score points we had to tally. And, unfortunately for me, the more score points we tallied the higher his cumulative total became.
We talked, analyzed, argued but never fought. I just realized that. We just really never fought!!! Those around me know that I am the type of person who could sometimes turn an argument into a quarrel, especially when I am very passionate about a specific topic and cannot get my message through. Gheis on the other hand, being a gentleman, never indulged me in a quarrel. Whenever he felt that reasoning has failed to persuade me, he would simply feel very sad about our disaccord. He would then give me this deep sad look not realizing neither this look’s obviousness nor the effect it had on me. I am sure that many of you who knew Gheis witnessed at some point this sad look I am talking about. This frustrated helpless sad look is unmistakable.
Despite our friendship, Gheis and I were not always in contact. From time to time, our contact would be severed and sometimes for more than few years in a row. For one thing, unfortunately for me, I am not the type of person who could keep in touch from a distance. But somehow, each time, as soon as Gheis and I would meet again, we would continue our conversations as if we were together just a moment earlier.
The last time I saw Gheis, which was after he was diagnosed with cancer, we started a conversation pertaining to his sickness. Unfortunately we did not get the chance to finish that conversation. Unfortunately because I still had to tell Gheis that life’s unfairness can sometimes defy any logic no matter how hard we try to analyze it or rationalize it. Sometimes there is just no justification for the misfortune that life brings upon us. Sometimes we lose a score point for no justifiable reason.
Gheis was always an avid cook. I personally started to seriously enjoy cooking only in the last few years ago. Last time I saw Gheis we both agreed that when he will get better we will host a cooking competition. Gheis and I would cook, each alone, few dishes and invite family and friends over. Without telling anyone who cooked what, we would let them judge who is the better cook.
That cooking competition did not take place. Gheis passed away and now I sometimes smile and cry to the thought that by doing so he spared me the loss of yet another point.
The way I see it, we do not have much of a choice when it comes to many of the people that affect our lives the most. We do not get to choose our father, our mother, our brother, our sister, our relatives. But when it comes to friendship: we do have a choice. I, for one, made a choice over fifty years ago. I chose that little kid that was shorter than me to be my friend and by the time he became taller than me I chose him to be my best friend, and he still is.
I am sure that, during the course of the last fifty years, Gheis had more friends than I had. With his personality and character this was inevitable. O.K. then: pertaining to the plenitude of friends, I do give him the score point. We have to keep counting points.
It is not as if I did not have or do not have any good friends. Since I was a little kid I had quite a few good friends and from both sexes: girls and boys. However the more I grew up in age the more the number of good friends around me dwindled. By the time I reached my mid-twenties I had very few good friends, mostly, if not solely, women. This scenario persisted.
During the course of the last two years or so, I have been going through an intense self-analysis phase. Among else, I had to understand, or maybe justify, the lack of men as good friends in my life. I attributed that to my mentality, my personality, my character and mostly to my eccentricity, a trait that most people around me witness. (Between parentheses: Gheis always acknowledged my eccentricity, embraced it and had a different interpretation of it. Once, when I was not around, instead of labeling me as an eccentric, he referred to me as a visionary. This is the best praise I had throughout my entire life, specially coming from Gheis).
So, getting back to what I was saying, me being myself explained the lack of men as good friends in my life, or at least this is what I thought until Gheis passed away. Now instead, I believe, no actually I know, that the lack of men as good friends in my life has always been Gheis’s fault, this is why:
You see, by being the man he is and by being my friend, Gheis had raised too high for me the bar of friendship.
Now add the fact that to me the object of the friendship game, including scoring points and all, is to improve and surpass myself.
Then the foregone conclusion is that: having experienced the type of friendship I had with Gheis, looking for another really good friend would have been almost futile.
Gheith, you passed away without giving us, you and me, the chance to tally up all the score points and declare the final winner.
I will do it now. I will sum it up confident you will agree with the scoring mechanism and the final result.
Ok then, let’s see:
You outran me when you were shorter and when you were taller than me.
You won more rounds of backgammon when we played together.
You won more when we played Poker and you were more of a gentleman winning it.
You caught more fish when we went fishing.
You caught more sea urchins when we went diving.
You could score high grades at school when you did not even have to study.
You mastered math more than I ever did.
You had puberty endow you with better traits.
You had way more charisma more than I had.
You were a better cook than I am.
You were more generous.
You were not jealous when it came to both our life companions and I was.
You tried more to keep in touch with me when we were far apart.
You had a better temper.
You helped me more times during our friendship.
You had more good friends around you, more than I ever had.
I could go on and on but by now I think that you, Gheith, believe that I am declaring you the final winner of the competition which we started over fifty years ago.
Well Gheith, my dear friend Gheith, I am sorry to disappoint you: I am declaring myself the final winner.
You see Gheith, when it comes to the most important score point in our friendship, which is the friendship itself, I won because I had, by choice, the privilege of having YOU as my best friend. I just had the best friend any person could ever even dream of having.
To all of you who knew Gheis… being his wife, his son, his father, his mother, his stepmother, his brother, his sister, his relative, his friend, his colleague, his… my only consolation to you is that you scored a very very important point in the game of your lives: you are the privileged group of people who had, either by choice, by luck or otherwise, Gheis in your lives.
To those of you who know me and never had the fortune of meeting my best friend Gheith, you should know that one important reason why I am who I am, my personality, my mentality, my character, my expectations, even my eccentricity was influenced by, affected by and forged by my friendship with Gheith.
To those who took care of Gheis during his sickness and endured with him his final struggle, my deepest gratitude for having taken care of my best friend. To you I also give you my heartfelt apologies because I was unjustifiably, inexcusably, not around you and around Gheis during that agonizing period.
To you Gheith, you should know that I still listen to the Ode to Joy of Beethoven, especially when I am in distress, now more than ever. And when I do, I feel lucky, proud, justifiably arrogant and I feel JOY because I had YOU in my life.
Farewell my good friend, my best friend.
Ramzi
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Elie Aoun posted a condolence
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Gheis Hamati is no stranger to a family of genii in Philosophy literature politics journalism and mathematics. His death is a big loss to the field of mathematics and other sciences. We will always miss him . May his soul rest in peace. Our deepest condolences to his family ,parents brothers and sisters and to hi friends as well as to the society of science.
S
Soumaya posted a condolence
Friday, June 3, 2016
My dearest son-in-law and best friend Gheis,
When I met you in 1966 you were a 8 year-old boy… smart, handsome, sweet, generous,
shy, and very kind. And since then and during the last 50 years we have been best friends, you didn't have the right to go before me.
My heart is bleeding. Nothing will be the same, but be sure darling that nothing, not even death itself, can take you from me because I will hold in my heart forever.
Rest in peace, darling. Love you and miss you already.
F
Frank lit a candle
Thursday, June 2, 2016
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May you rest in peace ..
C
Cynthia Yoder lit a candle
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
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With love & prayers for peace as you go through this difficult time.
I
Isabel Kentengian posted a symbolic gesture
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
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Gheis and Samar
Eternal love and peace to you and all your family.
Isabel
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Adi lit a candle
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
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To Gheis and his loving family.
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Nancy Evanovich lit a candle
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
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May you rest in heavenly peace.
S
Samar posted a symbolic gesture
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
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Samar posted a symbolic gesture
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
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Samar posted a symbolic gesture
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
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Samar lit a candle
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
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Brendon posted a symbolic gesture
Monday, May 30, 2016
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suzy posted a symbolic gesture
Monday, May 30, 2016
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suzy lit a candle
Monday, May 30, 2016
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suzy posted a symbolic gesture
Monday, May 30, 2016
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Oussama El-Mohtar posted a condolence
Monday, May 30, 2016
A flood of memories washed over me when I heard the news. Beirut, Sporting, Bruce Lee, Cat, Paris, and then heartache.
Rest in peace my dear friend. Your memory shall live in my heart for ever.
L
Linda Kreitzman posted a condolence
Monday, May 30, 2016
To Gheis' family:
I met your father years ago in the Bloomberg's offices, many times as he was interested in my students. Even at work, Gheis proudly showed me around and proved to be a great host. We spoke French, and he lovingly spoke about his sons. Gheis was a gentleman, and someone who loved to share his knowledge of history and literature. To his boys, let me tell you that Gheis loved you so much and was so proud of you. He called years ago to say his first son was finally applying to college; he asked questions about the college process, and I remember him telling me that it would be hard for him to see his son leave for college as his joy in life was coming home to his wife and his two boys.
I wish you, his family, peace and a lot of courage.
h
The family of Gheis H Hamati uploaded a photo
Monday, May 30, 2016
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