By Heather Carston
THERE are times when you read something that quite simply, cannot be improved upon. The loss of Karam Haddad to his family and friends, to Ōtorohanga, to the King Country and indeed the country has had a reverberating impact across the rohe in a way I have never seen before. To really understand how people feel, you have to look to those who knew him best. And in this instance, the words penned by writer and poet Brydie Walker Bain sum up the man, and the legend with a stunning simplicity that needs no further embellishing. The team that makes up the King Country News, like so many others, mourns the passing of this very special man and we extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends.
“While the world marks the passing of Britain’s longest reigning Queen, here in the King Country of New Zealand, there is another mourning that hangs in the air like a black mist we cannot shake from our heads. Last week a remarkable man named Karam Haddad passed away in a car accident. He and his brother John have run a menswear shop in Ōtorohanga named Haddad Menswear since 1965.
‘PECULIAR AND FABULOUS’ It is a most peculiar and fabulous place, where newfangled concepts like marketing and glitzy shop fronts are unnecessary. Over the decades, it has become an institution, where every customer is welcomed, befriended, kitted out in the latest Swazis, woollen socks and Red Bands, and sent on their way with their purchases wrapped in brown paper and their ears full of banter. It is a time warp, unparalleled and loved immeasurably. In the early 1970s when my dad was selling shirts he didn’t know how to spell ‘Maniapoto Street’ so he’d just write ‘Haddads, Main Street,’ and the shirts got there. When I told Karam this story fifty year later, he still remembered my dad. My mother-in-law went to school with the Haddads. She walked into the shop 60 years later and Karam called her by name. Since the accident, social media has been flooded with tributes and stories just like this, all celebrating this warm, funny man.
INCREDIBLE SIGHT Passing through Ōtorohanga on Friday we saw the most incredible thing – people had bought bouquets of flowers and stacked them in front of the store, just like at Buckingham Palace. We stopped to take photos and watched as passers-by stood with bowed heads to pay their respects. Kathleen, who has worked in the shop for 27 years, came out and told us how the ladies from up the road came every hour to arrange the fresh bouquets, and how “Karam and Liz would be walking through the pearly gates together.” I’d been wondering how to honour Karam, when I found this quote by an American journalist, Sydney J Harris: “Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester.” And that was Karam. A light who showed us all exactly what a community could be. A light who shone so bright that entering Haddad’s was a spectacle and an experience. A light who wove us together, who did not forget or leave people behind, a masterful operator of the human spirit. We are devastated that Karam has gone but I am beyond grateful for what an example of brilliance he was. His grace was achieved not by sitting in a palace and waving, but by living a life so bright and joyous, and sharing his humour so generously, that those of us who have been lucky enough to bask in its glow are left blinking, unable to believe the light has gone.
BRILLIANT EXAMPLE But if Karam were sitting here with me, I think he’d chuckle, and tell me that the whole purpose of shining like that is for others to know it is possible. And I realise that for year upon year, he handed out that light, slipping it into the brown paper packages and gumboots, never saying we could do better but instead demonstrating a more brilliant example of living. So I say to all of you who have known this amazing man, do not mourn that the light has been extinguished. Know instead that Karam has already passed it to the thousands and thousands of us weeping, and the greatest way to remember him is to hold that light high, and never once let it go out for as long as you are lucky enough to live. I think that’s exactly what Karam would have wanted.” – Brydie Walker Bain
