The Good Father

By Amany Radwan/Cairo

When the doorbell rang, it might have been a friend paying condolences. Instead it was a reporter with news that EgyptAir pilot Gamil el-Batouti was suspected of a crazed murder-suicide. His widow Omayma, 50, collapsed to the floor. Her clan faced a new nightmare: the glare of the world's media and the chilling gaze of U.S. investigators insisting that el-Batouti had killed 217 people.

Almost immediately, the family fought back. Cousins took journalists on a tour of el-Batouti's homes to prove he was solvent. His family produced financial records. His children offered tearful testimonials. The NTSB disowned the leaks; whether it did so for political reasons or investigative ones remained unclear.

The portrait of el-Batouti that emerged last week was of a big-hearted man who loved to fly. Nephew Walid told TIME that el-Batouti once gave up his New York City hotel room to Egyptians he met on his plane who had nowhere to stay. His brother-in-law told how el-Batouti loved to fly but hated to drive. Too dangerous, he said.

Hardly a religious zealot, el-Batouti enjoyed an occasional drink, which violates Islamic orthodoxy, and recently lost $300 in Las Vegas. "He wasn't stressed," says Los Angeles neurologist Mohsen Hamza, an old friend who saw him regularly. El-Batouti's real focus, Hamza and others say, was his daughter Aya, 10, who suffers from a treatable form of lupus. On trips home, he always tucked away a few bags of Aya's favorite snack, Doritos. "He was not the type who would kill himself and disappoint his daughter," says a friend, Juliet el-Sherif. "My father was the gentlest man," said son Karim, 20. "He could have never ever done such an awful thing."

--By Amany Radwan/Cairo