How It all started

In 2006 I completed my hematology-medical oncology fellowship from the Cleveland clinic. I was on a J-1 visa and I found a waiver a multi-specialty clinic in western Pennsylvania. We were going to live in Pittsburgh and my wife was supposed to transfer to Pittsburgh University in order to finish her BA-education. Like many of us, I was looking forward for this new life, we even went ahead and put a down payment to buy a house. We planned everything, from the house, to the furniture, the cars, and most important the details of my work. But, also like many of us, this always comes with this sensation of feeling “uncomfortable” and wither or not we are doing the right thing. I am not sure how to explain this feeling and why do we get it, we like to say it stems from our love and obligation towards our parents; but you can try to philosophy this more and look deep inside our “psychological” composition. An “un-debatable” fact is that “immigration” is not only a “normal” human behavior; but also, “immigration” was the force behind a majority of recent human advancements. But I have also noticed that myself and many of my friends do spend a considerable time and effort “psychological and emotional” debating this point, we even started looking into different resources to help us decide. I remember myself digging inside the “Islamic literature”, reading others` experiences and asking people who walked the same path; only to look for guidance in my decision. But as I currently believe, we usually first take the decision and then we look for the evidence to support out decision. We only look for this evidence in order to deceive ourselves that what we decided was not only our decision BUT it was the “right decision”. It helps us to lower our “regret”.


I guess another defense mechanism I used was to decide to take a vacation to go to Syria prior to starting this new life. I gave myself 4 months off hoping that this was going to be enough to obtain the visa to come back. This is something I say for the first time, when I left the US I felt inside me that I will not be returning back. It is a feeling that I could not explain, I felt that something inside was telling me “Sorry, I know how much effort you have put in this move but it is not intended to you and you know what you have to do; you should not run away from it”. When the airplane was taking off Cleveland this voice inside me was so loud that my eyes started tearing like a child who did something that he was not supposed to do and was standing in front of his mommy feeling remorse and regret. Even now, 4 years later, I still can feel this inside me as I am typing those words.


What I expected actually happened, I applied for my visa and 4 months later we heard nothing. I was living at my parents house, spent almost all my money, just missed my Board Exams, And I have a house at Pittsburgh that was waiting to be custom built. This is where a backup plan is always nice to have. Prior to me leaving the US I got in contact with Dr. A. J. who was moving to Riyadh-Saudi Arabia as a chairman for the Hematology-Medical Oncology Department at the National Guard Hospital. I called him from Syria and expressed my interest in doing 2-3 months Locum (hoping by that time my Visa would have been issued).

3 months passed in Riyadh, and yes, no visa arrived. The hospital in Riyadh was good, in fact the system is very close to what you may be used at in the US. But for me living in Riyadh was a problem. On one hand, my wife will lose the opportunity to finish her studies, since there are no private Universities for females in Riyadh. Like many decisions we take in our lives, we can always trace the roots for one single event “the tipping point”. Will, for me that was when I went to Ikea in Riyadh. For you who know Pittsburgh; also know that there is an Ikea store there. Our future house was just a walking distance from that Ikea. When we were going often to Pittsburgh for various reasons the most that we would enjoy is the moment when we go to Ikea, set at their restaurant and enjoy the nice scenery of Pittsburgh hills. The memories of that scene in my mind are connected to sunshine, feeling fresh and a lot of green color. Will in Riyadh the story was different. One day my brother, who lives in Riyadh, took me and his family to Ikea to have dinner there and the simplest way to put it “I was shocked”. There I found myself strangled in a small cubicle (probably not more than 2x 2 m.) separated from the surrounding with partitions, staring at the food in front of me and hearing babies in the cubicles around us crying. Next day I went to work and told them that I want to stay in the National Guard Hospital but I want to be transferred to Jeddah; I put the main reason as there is a private University for females in Jeddah which offers a BA – Education (obviously did not tell them about the Ikea story).

It was the right decision, since simply my visa took 22 months to be issued……..

And , alhamdulelah, although I missed my Board Exam the first year but the year after was the first time the ABIM started offering it outside the US, I did them both (Medical oncology and Hematology) and passed.

My next post will be about “living and working in Saudi Arabia). I will cover it all in one post just trying to highlight

What is this and Why

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

I have never bean a big fan of people who write their memoir, I always thought that a person`s life is something that can never be transcribed on paper, and the minute it is; it becomes a prisoner of those words and it runs the risk of destorting those esperiences in ways that were never meant to be.

On the other hand, events that happened to me over the last 4 years had left me in a position deprived from some of my closest friends and people who I used to share those thoughts-expereinces. This "sharing" process played a major role in shaping who I am as a person, and the way others currently see me is explained, at a large part, by previous acts of "human interactions". Unforutnatly, most of this "luxury" has been down-sized to a phone call done through a crappy service provider "by the way, I have read several times before in many of coolshababs E-mails, how people are discussing the best long distanse phone service provider and NO one mentioned how the people at the other end hears him/her.....I can now feel how my parents used to feel when I used to talk to them from the US" or through an E-mail where I try to find the "best" words to inject my emotions into, but most of the time I fail. (this has some few execptions like our recent VERY SHORT get together during hajj).

I describe myself as a "data driven" person, ORDER is what gives us comfort, predictability "even for things that we dont like" makes us feel safe; it is only unfamiliarity that brings pain and confusion. It is this "hazziness" that I think plays the major role in holding many people from coming back to work and live in Syria.

I have taken the decision to go back to Syria almost 8 months ago, and during this process I have tried to get the best "data" availabe to guide me through this process, and when this data was not readily avaialbe I would try to look for it myself; the propose is to make the best informed decision in every diffrent aspect of moving back home. The process will cover everything from work, home living, schools and social life. Many of the events have already occured and will only be documenting them retrospectively and as we move along we will be matching what is currently going on. I am starting this post 6 months prior to my planned moving date and my plan is to run it for a total of 1 year (so 6 months before and after). I will be posting once weekly (each friday) and more often if needed.

The main purpose is to make this a rich and informative post where we can discuss diffrent issues that are related to people with situations similar to mine. I will share with you all my expereinces, with most of the "objective data" I was able to collect and I will be asking your help in taking some of the decisions and open to your suggestions.

Finally, I try my best to maintain a positive attitude and try to look for the full half, this will not be a post for negativity or pessimisim and if you are one of those I am sure you will find MANY OTHER resources over the internet to fullfill your satisfaction.

thanks for following