Omar in front of IRIS, November 2005. I think at this point I was trying to get him to smile.
There are certain people I don’t maintain relationships with. Haven’t seen them in years; don’t keep in touch. But I like them. Fiercely. I respect what they do. And I know that we’re all working toward the same goal: repairing the world. My friend Karim Kasim, in his lovely poetic and Egyptian way, says that these people form our “circle of love” — they somehow sustain you by the simple fact that they understand you, share some of your values, and are in the world doing their thing.
Omar Azfar was part of my circle. He died yesterday — January 21, 2009 — of bone cancer. I’m shocked and saddened. I didn’t even know he was sick.
I met Omar in October 2004. We worked at the IRIS Center, a small consulting firm/think tank founded by Mancur Olson in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland. We were both there until somewhere around the spring of 2006, when I left to work freelance with the aim of moving back to Montreal and he went on to a professorship at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York.
Omar was an economist and an expert on corruption, decentralization, and governance. He did his undergrad at Oxford in philosophy, politics, and economics, and his PhD at Columbia. How bad-ass is that? He was a slender, good-looking guy with a slightly English accent. Smart and friendly; sometimes arrogant and vain. (I had to take his photo once for the IRIS website and he gave me such a hard time, but as you see from the photo above I luckily captured his beauty and intelligence.) He would wear a ripped t-shirt and jeans to work and then clean up real nice when it was time to give a presentation.
We worked together on a few projects: a corruption assessment toolkit, a summary of a technique to figure out which survey respondents are lying, explaining how corruption undermines healthcare. I looked through these today to remember him. (You can type his name into the IRIS search tool to see more of his writing.)
His passing is a loss to all of us.
You can download photos I took of Omar in front of IRIS in November 2005 (Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3). I’m dedicating them to the public domain. Take them and use them well.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Very nice tribute, Christine! Hope you are well.
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I also have met him once.I saw the arrogance but if intelligence can be given a face, then it would have been his…and such a good looking face at that.My heart goes out to his family and may he rest in peace.
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
From Omar’s family:
Please join us to celebrate the life of Omar Azfar at a memorial service on Sunday, January 25, 2009
2-4 pm
15th Floor, Kellogg Center
International Affairs Building
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
420 West 118th Street, New York, NY
between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive
In lieu of sending flowers, please feel free to contribute to a charity or cancer research organization of your choice. Omar’s interests were as wide as the world, and he would be happy if you supported anything ranging from the Museum of Natural History to Discovery Channel, from Transparency International to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:01 pm
My thoughts and prayers are with Omar’s family at this very difficult time.
With deepest sympathy,
Mahnaz Habib.
January 24th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I want to contact Mr Kamal Azfar. Does someone know where is he staying, phone number, any other contact method?
Syed Akhtar
January 24th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
I felt sorry for the young death. My heartiest condolence with family and with deceased’s parents. May Allah give courage to everybody to bear the loss and prayers for the soul.
January 25th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Our deepest condolences to the Azfar family. May Omar’s soul rest in eternal peace and may Allah grant the family the courage to bear this irreparable loss.
January 25th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Thank you so much Christine for your kind words about Omar and also everyone above who has commented. I, too, did not know he was sick and was absolutely shocked and saddened to hear that he had passed away. I met Omar when he and I were both joining the full-time faculty at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the fall of 2006. Readjusting to life in New York after living in Bahrain, I found his Oxford charm and worldliness to be a great anedote to my feeling of cultural dislocation. As the year went on, Omar organized a means for all the new faculty, across disciplines and departments, to meet and keep in touch… through drinks at Disiac’s off 9th Ave. in Hell’s Kitchen.
His passion for economics and important issues of development and corruption were unmatched and he had the intellectual prowess to make a real mark in the field– and he did. But there was so much more to come from his bright mind and it saddens me to think we only got a small taste of all that was possible. Most of all, I will remember him as the supremely friendly and supportive colleague that he was– a real friend to all with a wry sense of humor. I am so sad by his passing, but also so glad that I got to rub elbows with him for a couple of years and experience a truly engaged and inspiring scholar. I wish his friends and family all the best going forward.
January 26th, 2009 at 3:22 am
Those whom the Gods love die young.
Naheed, I am absolutely shattered. I did not even know he was ill.
My heart goes to you and Kamal and Mursalina, Sarah and Fareed.
Accept my heartful sympathies. You are in my thoughts and prayers.
May Allah bestow on you Sabrey-Jameel,and bestow on Omer a high place
in Janat-ul-Firdaus.
Najma & Aziz Habib
January 27th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Christine
So nicely worded; he was in my circle too. Always in mind as a good friend even though I fell out of touch in between when he moved to NYC. I came to know him for the first time when I rode with him from DC to Boston for the 2001 NEUDC conference. Since then we saw many world cup cricket matches together at my house..and then I learnt he was sick and before I could meet him he just went away. The news has affected me immensly perhaps reflecting the space he actually had in our life. Like Najma says, only the good die young…
January 28th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Christine,
That was a really lovely tribute. Thanks for sharing the photos as well. I will miss Omar; he was a super cool, super smart guy. I, too, was shocked at the news of his passing. Unfortunately, it is a reminder that some of us are here only briefly, and our relationships should be cherished, as they are precious.
My sincere condolences to Omar’s family and friends.
January 31st, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Omar was my classmate at Karachi Grammar School until 1986. We also met on the Columbia campus at the steps of Low Library. He was always a little aloof and seemed more of an observer of his classmates than a participant. Nevertheless, he was a respected scholar and possessed a brilliant mind. It’s gratifying to know that he left a legacy and contribution for others to follow through. Omar will be missed.
February 3rd, 2009 at 6:42 am
I knew Omar from grammar school, Omar was seen as a icon, with a brilliant mind, I heard about his deeath and was confirming it by browsing the internet, very sad to get the confirmation that is Omar Azfar
February 17th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
I am shocked to hear of Omi’s death from bone cancer. I am truly sorry. Omi was our roomate, when we were all doing our PhDs at Columbia in the 1990s. I have photographs of all the parties we used to have in our apartment. We spent a wonderful 4 years together, all 4 of us, in our apartment at 415 West 118th Street, Apt. #32. We never knew Omi was ill, but then again, Cancer is a silent killer. “Omi, you are in my thoughts and prayers…….and for sure, I will cherish the photographs that I took of all of us, having fun, philosophizing, discussing world events, eating, dancing and enjoying ourselves…..I will never forget you.
February 18th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Christine-
I just saw this post today, it is shocking. I still remember when I met him my second week at IRIS. Omar was a character. Brilliant and strange at the same time. I still have the book he and Chad wrote on my shelf at home, “Market-Augmenting Government.” Really sad news indeed.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:12 am
I am shocked and saddened to hear of Omar’s death. Death does seem to take the best ones at an early age. My sincere condolences to his family. He will be missed, even by those of us who hadn’t seen him in many years.
March 31st, 2009 at 6:03 am
Mr. kamal azfars email is kamalazfar@yahoo.com
Both Kamal and I would like to thank all of Omars friends for their warm tributes.
He died with great courage and impossible though it may seem in the circumstances, with his sense of humour firmly in place.
Two days before his death he had opinions about where he wanted to be buried[ a quiet, peaceful beautiful spot], where his funeral should be
held[Max'sCafe!] and when a close relative suggested that perhaps he, Omar, might profit by reading something about how to cope with a terminal illness that could only end one way, Omar laughed and quipped,
Yes, do you mean something like ‘Dying for Dummies”!!
Please share your anecdotes about him and send us any photographs that any of you might have of Omar.
While all parents feel that they know their children best it is only when something like this happens that they actually get to know their child better.It is through the prism of the other lives that the child has touched that a clearer, deeper, sharper picture emerges of the journey that was a life.
June 28th, 2009 at 3:28 am
I got to know Omar socially in the DC area and spent an evening chatting with him and his friends at Cafe Rumba in Adams Morgan. Later, as a fellow young economist attending conferences sponsored by the American Economics Association and the Eastern Economics Association, I came to expect Omar Azfar sightings at such conferences. He was a brilliant economist who had a way of speaking with absolute scholarly authority on abstruse matters related to econometrics. I really looked up to Omar as a scholar and was impressed with his ability to balance being a very serious economist with a fun loving outgoing lifestyle. Omar had been interviewed by Mancur Olson himself when he was offered the position at IRIS. His research was in the area which sought to understand the link between governance and growth and he always pointed out useful directions to take one’s research in — once suggesting that I look at the work by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson on White Settler Mortality rates and long term economic performance.
August 2nd, 2009 at 7:36 am
I was searching for Omar’s homepage for his list of publications (which I intended to use for a list of Pakistani Economists with publications in top journals for my website http://www.pakeconomics.com) and when I googled for him I was shocked to learn that he is no more. Just two or three days before I was talking with one of my friends about persons I met personality of whom I like most and first name that came to my mind was of Omar. I only met him once. It was 2004 when he came to Applied Economics Research Centre in Karachi. He was working on an experimental economics research topic. He asked for a group of students to be part of the experiment. I was one of them. [I don't remember exactly the experiment but its setting was like this: there was a ruler who distributes state resources between public and himself and there was public to elect the ruler and an auditor.It was a multi-period game.] We had a sitting of more than two hours with him and enjoyed a lot. I was immensely impressed by his personality. He was intelligent, charming and had warmth for us. I am surprised to read here about his arrogance. His death is so sad. May he rest in peace. Amen.
August 4th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Man, I miss him. Omar was an amazing economist and a wonderful person. I was his RA for a couple of years while at Maryland in grad school. He always took pains and time out of his day to keep me involved in all of the projects that we worked on together at the highest level. We kept in touch some over the years, and I got to meet him in Boston a few times for drinks or sushi to talk about life and a few things we were working on together. After his illness popped up he never showed even the slightest sign of letting it get him down. I’ll miss his grace, his mind, and his friendship.
August 13th, 2009 at 7:47 am
hi dear all,
its really sad to read .but who is omar i mean who is he where he was working.i just was searching my name in the ent and i found this site.
my name is also omar
very sad for omar .
thank you
October 7th, 2009 at 3:19 am
I only found out about Omar last night (07-Oct-09) when I opened my mail and read the obituary page of the college yearbook. As you can imagine it came as a total shock and even more so when I googled his name this morning to come across this webpage and discover that he had quietly been suffering from bone cancer.
Omar and I were both students at Balliol together (Oxford, UK) and I remember him very well as he used to make me laugh a lot. We lost touch after graduation but from reading the comments above it seems like his dress sense never changed from student days!
He was very good all rounder academically as he started a course in Mathematics before changing to Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE). He was a very popular character and was well known around the college. Judging by the photo above it seems like he hardly aged a bit since his twenties apart from a few grey hairs and to think we must roughly be the same age!
I also remember him for his wide taste in music. We shared our passion for Springsteen but he would suddenly flip and become totally obsessed with listening to Dire Straits, Jim Morrison, Dylan or something. I still envy him for being able to get tickets to see The Boss for one of his Wembley shows in 1988!
I still remember the trip we took down to London from Oxford on a bus one Saturday with some friends. I can still picture him ambling his way up Regent Street in his scruffy jeans like he didn’t have a care in the world! It amazed me at the time how Omar (as a foreigner) knew his way around London more than I did!
Naturally, I am very saddened to hear of his loss, especially at such a young age. My deepest sympathies go out to his family. Even though we’d not been in touch for such a long time I often think of him and he’ll certainly be missed and will continue to be remembered in our duas.
And in the words of Bruce…
“Well, I came by your house the other day,
your mother said you went away
She said there was nothing that I could have done
There was nothing nobody could say
Me and you, we’ve known each other ever since we were sixteen
I wished I would have known, I wished I could have called you
Just to say goodbye, Bobby Jean!”