MOHAMED Mahfouz Balid was only 47-years-old when he was killed in a road accident in Lisburn. He was cycling to a factory where he worked.
His actual profession was that of a dentist which takes five years study at university with an additional year as a training practitioner.
Mr Balid had a wife and four children. He had over twenty years experience as a dentist and had fled from the Syrian city of Aleppo to protect his family.
Like many of the refugees he fled without possessions to a place he probably never heard of to build a new life in safety. God only knows what is going through the head of his wife now alone with four children in a strange country.
Mr Balid was awaiting certification to resume dentistry when he died. He did not have the £5k needed for the fee, so he took a job at a factory to provide for his family until that money could be raised.
Mr Balid’s story is tragic but it also explodes the myth about refugees coming to Northern Ireland and Britain looking to live off our great benefits system.
Mr Balid took a job well below his skills level. He was not going to stand on false pride in his adopted country. But what of his wife and children now having lost the main breadwinner?
Mr Balid’s story was only one story in a series of nightmarish horrors that struck last week. The earlier revelations about the loss of five lives in the freakish accident in Buncrana was mind numbing.
It was a harrowing tale of heroism, selflessness and tragedy. What must have run through the mind of Mr McGrotty as he returned to his car to be with his boys after handing his baby daughter over to the selfless Davitt Walsh, the unassuming hero who risked his own life to save others?
It’s hard to imagine how Louise James found the strength to cope with the near complete wipe out of her family, her partner, her mother, her sister and her beloved boys.
An entire country was stunned and shocked. Fr Paddy O’Kane, the priest who spoke so eloquently and with great humanity said: ``Even the heavens were crying”.
When he said it I remembered that Irish people often say `Happy the corpse the rain falls on.’
The folklore that went with that saying was that it was a sign that the angels were crying; but not for those who had died but for those who are left behind.
It’s doubtful if Ms James will ever let her remaining child of hope, Rioghnach-Ann out of her sight and who would blame her. Ms James has shown remarkable strength amidst unspeakable horror, one can only trust that her community, like the one which has adopted Mrs Balid and her children, will provide the support needed going forward.
But the grim reaper’s shadow wasn’t quite finished with our gruesome week when the news came through about the bombs in Brussels.
With family living and using the metro at the centre of one of the bomb sites, one’s immediate thoughts turned to their safety.
The indiscriminate nature of suicide bombers is perhaps the most horrifying aspect of these attacks. There are no warnings. No time to say goodbye.
How conflicted must have been the range of feelings that the family of David Dixon went through; most likely a whole range of emotions from fear, to relief to devastation
After the bomb attack at Brussels airport, Mr Dixon texted his aunt saying he was safe. Unsuspecting, he then boarded the metro, never to re-emerge.
Thirty others, who set out on their normal day in Brussels oblivious to the evil intentions of the bombers, would lose their lives too. A further 270 would suffer the trauma of injury.
In news terms it was a bad week. But it is weeks like this that puts other things in perspective.
Gerry Adams's slight by the White House security staff, the cost of eating at the Assembly and a TD being kicked by a cow, hardly seems worth the air time.
People like Ms James, Mrs Balid and Charlotte Sutcliffe, partner of Mr Dixon, face much more difficult days ahead. Their issues are real ones.
At the same time even in horror humanity manages to shine through thanks to the extraordinary actions of everyday heroes like Davitt Walsh.
