In Honor of My Dearest Father
It is with great sadness and a heavy heart I share that my dear father and a remarkable educator and public servant, Ghulam Ahmad Nadi, left this world yesterday. His integrity, discipline, and passion live on in his greatest legacies: his nine children and the thousands of students around the world in whom he instilled a patriotic spirit for their country, a sense of service to their community, and a strong compassion for their fellow man.
As Principal of the prestigious Habibia High School in Kabul, Afghanistan, he touched the lives of nearly 20,000 students, among them the former President of Afghanistan. His roles as the loving father we knew and the transformative educator he was to many are inseparable. As he would often say, “I treat my students like my children. I am as tough on them as I am on my kids, and I look out for their welfare as much as I do for that of my kids.”
Born in Kabul in 1931 into a progressive and enlightened family, my father’s life in Afghanistan coincided with the most peaceful and advanced era in the country’s history. He was the eldest son of Mirjan Khan Nadi, a distinguished statesman and candidate in the Parliamentary Elections of the 1960s for the Province of Logar.
As a student, my father possessed a natural ability to learn — to say he was studious and worked hard for his grades would not be true. Blessed with a very curious and inquisitive nature, my father would spend more time exploring the world and people around him than he did sitting in class. However, when it came time for school exams, he would always receive the highest marks, to the bewilderment of his peers.
My father’s effortless academic success can be best described by one of the stories he told me. One year, he enrolled in the advanced algebra class of Mr. Thomas, a visiting instructor from Princeton University. He fondly told me how, early on, he raised his hand when he spotted an error in his teacher’s math. From that day onward, if my father made the slightest gesture or even adjusted his posture in class, Mr. Thomas would stop and ask, “What’s up, Nadi?,” curious as to which new error he had just made. At the end of the school year, Mr. Thomas gifted his beloved pupil an algebra textbook, which my father cherished for years to come.
After completing his own studies, my father dedicated his life to the noblest of professions: education. He began his career as a teacher at Massoud Saad School where he both shaped the lives of his students through instruction as well as implemented progressive programs and reforms. Recognizing his contributions, the Ministry of Higher Education awarded my father a scholarship to earn a bachelor’s degree in public administration at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. (He would speak with warm nostalgia of his time in Beirut and the beautiful, cosmopolitan metropolis it was. It was in his heart thereafter.)
Upon his return to Kabul, he joined the Ministry of Higher Education. Due to his acumen for public administration and deep understanding of the complexities of educational institutions, the Director of Habibia High School hired my father as the school’s new Principal. At the time, frequent protests and social unrest made my father’s reputation as a decent, disciplined, and progressive reformer much needed. Under his leadership, Habibia gained a reputation for producing a generation of leaders with academic excellence, a high code of conduct, and a commitment to public service.
My father had an uncanny ability to identify how his country’s political challenges were tied to its educational system (he had later gone on to earn his Masters of Fine Arts in Literature and Afghan History at Kabul University). He would emphasize to his students, “Learn the science that our poor country has made it easy for you to learn for free. Only science can save us from poverty, make us independent and stand us on our feet; illiteracy and a lack of science mean constant dependence.” And during the period of rule under Major General Sardar Daoud Khan in which the country was becoming unstable, my father remarked, “Afghanistan is like an airplane preparing to take off. Any political and social instability will cause it to crash.”
After Habibia High School, my father served as the Director of Food Relief at the World Food Program (WFP) offices in Kabul. He had an appreciation for microeconomics and the issues plaguing the country. Based on his experiences at the WFP, he said, “While this aid is good for urgent relief, it is not a lasting option to save people from poverty.”
Oh, how can I describe my father: There was nothing ordinary about the man. Everyone who was fortunate enough to enter his orbit immediately sensed something special. His genius, charisma, boisterous voice, and passionate heart allowed him to befriend the newest stranger. He spoke five languages, started Afghanistan’s first soccer team, and had a keen engineering and problem-solving ability. He was a visionary and a progressive thinker at a time when the country had a small hope for change. He had a profound understanding of the issues plaguing Afghanistan and knew the best and only tool to make a positive impact on society was education — to pursue knowledge and ask questions. Many of his concerns about the country’s future proved to be all too accurate.
He was a great man. He was a man with a sweet and tender heart, always with an interest to help anyone around him, always wanting to make someone’s life better by giving his time and energies generously. He is a man that always wore a suit in his later years, although retired. He was part of an era and a generation that is coming to exist only in memories. He was “old school cool,” as my brother says.
It is with great sadness that we lost him yesterday, February 18, surrounded by his loving family at his home on Long Island, New York. May his place be in heaven up there with the angels and his legacy as an educator, a reformer, and, most of all, a tremendously loving father, live on in the institutions he shaped, and in the hearts of his family, friends, and countless students around the world.
