Kabul’s neurosurgical loss may be our gain
Doctor pins his hopes on Vancouver
AFTER KABUL: Ajmal Zemmer was six years old when he, his father Assadulah and his mother Shakilla left a Kabul cafe one evening. Minutes later, a rocket killed several patrons. Days later, Ajmal was urging university pharmacy teacher Shakilla that negotiations with a neighbour would make him late for kindergarten, when another rocket demolished a nearby gas station. Then Assadulah ran in, “paler than I had ever seen him,” to say that a third rocket had killed four children and wounded others at the kindergarten. “We have to leave,” Assadulah said. That was from a city where there were bars, cinemas and women dressed “just like here,” Ajmal remembers. “Here” is the Vancouver General Hospital’s Blusson Spinal Cord Centre where Ajmal will be a surgery resident until January 2019, and hopes to be retained. Back in 1989, with Assadulah detained for two years in Afghanistan, Ajmal and Shakilla found their way to Bremen, Germany, applied for asylum and “lived in a bad neighbourhood where quite a few guys I went to school with ended up dealing drugs or being criminals,” Ajmal said. “But Germany gave me a lot.” Benefiting from Europe’s free higher education for those with good grades, he graduated from medical school — “a game-changer. I am thankful for that.” Envisioning a future in surgery and research, he then took an MD -PhD degree. He also “worked my butt off ” for three months at New York University after a lucky encounter with eminent neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinas “opened a lot of doors for me.” One he opened led to 42 months of residency at University Hospital, Zurich, a city with nine neurosurgery centres (Vancouver has two). Speedy medical attention, too. Patients reporting back pain are seen that day, have an MRI in perhaps two days and surgery within a week, Ajmal said. Such assets aside, VGH neurosurgery and spinal staff “have given me fantastic training … that, in my experience, is better than in Europe. And working conditions are great here.” Buttressing his Vancouver career hopes, Ajmal’s wife Erin has an online travel agency and two daughters here. Ideally, he would practice with the opportunity to contribute to still-troubled Afghanistan that almost killed him, and made him a refugee, at age six. As his grandfather, Abdul Rahim, said: The word impossible only occurs in the dictionary of fools.” TALKING TURKEY: Anil Bora Inan has been Turkey’s consul general here since 2015. His nation’s minister of foreign affairs, Mevlut Cavusoglu, officially established the mission recently when he and Turkey’s ambassador to Canada, Selcuk Unal, cut a ribbon at its Georgia-at-Thurlow office. Staff there “do business in six languages 24/7,” Cavusoglu told guests. As for Canada and Turkey’s business relationship, “bilateral trade should rise to possibly $3 billion this year,” Cavusoglu said and, glancing meaningfully at entrepreneurs present, “We believe we can do much better.” HIGH FLYER: The market manoeuvring of ultra-low-cost-carriers Flair and Swoop (no Pounce yet) and others mightn’t have concerned city businessman David Ho. In 2002, the billionaire Hong Kong Tobacco Co. scion founded four-aircraft Harmony Airways. But flying is a cruel business, as the rabbit said to the hawk. Ho pulled Harmony’s plug in 2007, and crash-landed personally in 2012. But that’s another story.
LA BREITHE SHONA DUIT: The Irish may wish their homeland happy birthday that way on its 99th national day Jan. 21.
EASY OVER: Promoting the third annual Science of Cocktails benefit for Science World Feb. 8, Tristan Sawtell staged a pre-taste at Showcase Restaurant and Bar. Among other gee-whizzery, Wentworth Hospitality Group beverage director Jean-Sebastian Dupuis made molecular caviar pearls by “spherification.” The science entailed dripping a yuzu juice-sodium alginate mixture into calcium chloride solution to resemble fish eggs. The cocktail component came from vodka, sake, simple syrup, citric acid and a whole lotta shakin’.
MOVE TO MOV: No sooner was Italian Cultural Centre’s executive director Mauro Vescera’s smiling mug in this column Jan. 13 than he quit to become CEO of Museum of Vancouver. After 11year incumbent Nancy Noble left that gig in 2016, the MOV board’s “rigorous and disciplined search” produced Museum of London director Mark Richards. He barely had time for a paddle in MOV’s crab-fountain pool before leaving in July 2017. Recasting the net snagged Vescera at Grandview and Slocan Street.
AFTER JAZZ: Delta-raised jazz singer Jaclyn Guillou recorded her Live At The Firehall Centre For The Arts and To The City here. Her Dinah Washington tribute, This Bitter Earth, scored a 2016 Juno vocal jazz album of the year nomination. Last year, she vanished into the south of Spain — the Deep South according to the twang of her London-recorded new single, It Comes Down. With a more easily rendered name, Delta Jackson, she’ll tour North America and play here again on April 28. DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Perhaps the Yellow Pages firm’s proposed sale of acquisitions will entail Western Living and Vancouver magazines it bought in 2015 “to encompass livability information pertinent to homebuyers,” VP Caroline Andrews said then.