Rebel doctor tells his story
By Emma Ballingall Imagine your first memory was of lowflying jets launching missiles into the city you call home.
Rising from poverty to train as a doctor despite losing three family members – one executed at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s government.
At the age of 27, protecting and running a 400-bed hospital in Baghdad.
And finally, emigrating to Australia with nothing to escape the similar fate of friends who had been killed amongst the violence and corruption of Iraq.
Issam Muteir is a specialist doctor at West Gippsland Hospital who has lived through all this and more.
He has written his memoir “Rebel Doctor: From Baghdad to the Australian Bush” in the hopes of providing a unique insider’s story of living in war-torn Baghdad as well as providing a history for his children to read in future.
Dr Muteir said other books “will not tell you what is going on in the life of people during the war”, emphasising the people of Iraq have seen four wars over 30 years.
“I know this book is very valuable. In the media, you don’t see these people always having war. How the people are living. There are noble people living there.”
Dr Muteir said he hopes, through understanding and education, that people in Australia will learn of what life was like in Iraq.
“They know about war in Iraq and Middle East but nowhere is able to tell the story from an insider…their stories and their experiences.”
Dr Muteir emphasised it was a memoir and contains no political agenda and the reader could come to their own conclusions.
“I have political views but it’s primarily the story of what I saw, how I felt and what I did.”
Despite being filled with heartache of losing family and friends in Iraq, he emphasised it’s “all happy at the end”.
Heartache included Dr Muteir losing his father as a young boy. His father was working as a soldier in the north but died in a train accident whilst finalising retirement paperwork.
A sister died from asthma when he was just 16 - a year prior to Dr Muteir fulfilling her dream for him to becoming a top 10 student in Iraq so he could become a doctor.
His brother was later executed by Saddam for a minor stealing offence.
Fearing for his life, Dr Muteir won a sixmonth Australian Government scholarship and arrived in Australia in 2007.
Although a specialist in Iraq, he found it difficult to gain a medical position until West Gippsland Hospital offered him a medical officer job in April, 2009.
He worked at Warragul from 2009 to 2011 before leaving to retain and practice as a specialist. He is now back working in Warragul.
“People here are very friendly, I love the hospital.”
Although he has overcome obstacles to finish specialist training and made a family of his own, Dr Muteir still has his mother, brothers and a sister in Iraq.
He said life was hard for his mother who raised eight children, most of whom were students.
“She supported all of us despite hardship of being a single mum, multiple wars. She made me a very strong person.”
“It’s not easy,” he said of his family still living in Iraq. “They are living.”
The idea of writing a book came after doing a presentation on his life in Iraq at West Gippsland Hospital.
It included the story of running a hospital in Baghdad for two months.
He protected the 400-bed hospital, changed it from fee paying to free for the public and was labelled “Leader of Rebel Doctors” in US media.
“It was not easy, it put my life in danger. But I managed to keep it running and free to the public.”
“Rebel Doctor: From Baghdad to the Australian Bush” will be officially launched at Warragul Library tomorrow.