“Welcome to the world baby Kareem. Hope your future will be better than ours,” Ayman Mustafa wrote in a social media post introducing his newborn son to the world a week before Christmas.
One would have to be familiar with Mustafa’s story to really gauge the weight of his words.
Seven years ago, escaping the civil war, the Syrian surgeon lost his first wife and daughter in a deadly shipwreck off Lampedusa that claimed hundreds of lives.
He arrived in Malta with nothing but the images in his mind of his young wife and toddler slipping from his grasp as the boat capsized in the October night.
“They are both with me all the time, in my thoughts, in my daily prayers, and still their photos burn my eyes and heart whenever I see them,” he says of Fatama and three-year-old Joud.
There was no option but to stand up on my feet and continue with my life hiding my scars deep in my heart
Now remarried and with not one but three children demanding his attention, Ayman Mustafa explains how fatherhood has helped him get through his darkest days.
“Back in October 2013, I reached Malta totally destroyed. I had lost everything – my beloved family, job, money, title, my freedom, and even my name. I used to be called 13V-84 in the detention,” he says.
“There was no option but to stand up on my feet and continue with my life hiding my scars deep in my heart.”
Shortly after he was released from detention, with the help of Chris Fearne, then parliamentary secretary for health, Mustafa started a new job as a surgeon at Mater Dei and lecturer at the University of Malta.
It was during this time that he struck up an online friendship with Reem, “a lovely person who brought the life back to my days”.
The couple married in September 2015 and “being a father again was the last stone in the reconstruction of my life here in Malta”.
His daughters, two and four years old, keep the couple busy and happy all day.
“Meriam is funny and doesn’t stop speaking, singing and asking questions all day and Lara, the younger daughter, tries to copy her sister all the time,” says their doting father.
He is extremely grateful to the Maltese for all the support he has received and explains that at every difficult corner he has found someone “to kindly hold my hand” and help him face the challenges.
“Really, I couldn’t make it without their help,” he repeats.
But handling baby Kareem, he can’t help but worry about his children’s future.
While he has a stable job which he loves, and has a great affinity for Malta, he feels that the future is always an issue when a person has no home to go back to.
“Having children is a big responsibility especially when a person has no stability in life. My final wish is to watch my children grow up here as if it is their own country,” he says.