The Apple of his eye
Abdulfattah Jandali only recently learned that he was the biological father of Steve Jobs.
Abdulfattah Jandali sees himself in his biological son, said Georgina Dickinson in the New York Post. Though they’ve never met, Jandali and his son, Steve Jobs, have a few things in common. Jobs was until recently the CEO of Apple; Jandali is the vice president of a Reno, Nev., casino. Both are stubborn, unwilling to speak to each other despite the knowledge that the other exists. “This might sound strange, but I am not prepared, even if either of us was on our deathbed, to pick up the phone to call him,” says Jandali, a Syrian immigrant who is still working at age 80. “The Syrian pride in me doesn’t want him ever to think I am after his fortune.’’
Jandali and Jobs’s mother conceived the Apple co-founder before they were married, and she gave him up for adoption because her parents didn’t want her to marry a foreigner. He only recently learned the identity of the boy she gave away. “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t sadden me to have not been part of my son’s incredible journey,” he says. Still, he praises Jobs’s adoptive parents for “an incredible job” of raising him, and says he regards his iPhone and iPad with both pride and wonderment. “I honestly look at these things and cannot believe Steve created them.”
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