230 GQ.COM.AU SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017U
nder the cloak of a balmy night, the armoured black
SUV hits 140km/h. It’s bolting down Route Irish,
once known as the deadliest road in the world.
The stoic driver floors it – failing to ever fully stop
at the various security checkpoints. On the roof of
the car, in plain sight, two flame-shaped rotating
cylinders block cell phone signals, foiling the remote detonation
of any explosives.
In the front passenger seat, a dapper delegate of the Iraqi Prime
Minister juggles two phones, texting, calling, Viber-ing and
WhatsApp-ing at a frantic pace. Doctor Munjed Al Muderis, the
pioneering Iraqi-Australian orthopaedic surgeon, sits in the rear.
Tonight he’s taking in Baghdad, his hometown, for the first time
in almost two decades.
“As the plane started descending, all I could think was, ‘What
have I done?’” confided Al Muderis to GQ, moments after landing.
It had taken a personal invitation from Iraqi Prime Minister,
Haider al-Abadi to convince him to return. And now, he was
questioning his RSVP.
Travelling at speed down Route Irish means feeling every bump –
every patched-over scar from an improvised explosive device (IED) or
mortar. We’re racing from Baghdad International Airport, bound for
the relative safety of the Green Zone – Baghdad’s administrative
city-within-a-city. A few weeks earlier, this careful, choreographed
routine was used to carry Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Spend long enough with Al Muderis and you’re bound to encounter
his theory on the Wheel of Fortune – a personal metaphor for the
cyclical rhythm of life’s ups and downs. As he descended a private
staircase off a plane and into an armoured Mercedes, it was clear that
his fortune has undeniably swung back to the top.
Al-Abadi has invited Al Muderis to visit from his harbourside home
in Sydney – a city in which he’s pioneered the revolutionary
osseointegration surgery, a procedure that eschews a centuries-old
socket system, fusing bone to titanium,
allowing patients to use limbs once
thought lost. Al-Abadi, overseeing
a relentless battle with IS, has an army
rank full of soldiers whose limbs have
been removed by IEDs. Long-estranged
from his home country, Al Muderis
could be the key to getting these soldiers
back into the field.
If you’d asked the 45-year-old surgeon
just a year ago, he’d have told you that his
place in Iraq is something he left for
dead, decades earlier. Australia, happily,
is home now. Baghdad, the place of what
was a charmed childhood, had become
the stage of nightmares. The last time
he’d been here, his fortunes were
dimmed – almost permanently. In fact,
a few weeks before heading back, he’d joked that the Iraqi invitation
was perhaps a rouse – that he’d be tricked into returning, then killed.
But that risk has been taken – Al Muderis returned to reconcile his
life, past and present.
A thousand times over, this could have been the story of a man
dehumanised to the point of radicalisation, or the story of another
unassimilated refugee living in helplessness. Instead, Al Muderis’
story is a reminder, that a man can always start – and restart – again.Al Muderis easily admits that he was born with a silver spoon in
his mouth. In reality, it may have been gilded. His is a family tree
stuffed with cultural and political influence – one that can allegedly
be traced back to the Prophet Muhammad, and one that, to this day,
commands deference.
He grew up with a nanny and a housekeeper. A chauffeur drove
him to his school. Such was the standing of Al Muderis’ education
that Saddam Hussein’s own sons, Uday and Qusay, attended his high
school – the latter at the same time as Al Muderis. He recalls their
obnoxious and violent behaviour, and how they’d often arrive for
school in a new Mercedes, or on quad bikes.
While harbouring a keen interest in robotic limbs – driven by
watching The Terminator at 12 – the heavy burden of family legacy saw
Al Muderis go on to do a degree in medicine. His time at university
was continually interrupted as the First Gulf War broke out in 1990.
US forces were pounding the Hussein regime, which would eventually
be forced to retreat from Kuwait.
Like most Iraqis, Al Muderis didn’t consider the war reason enough
for life to grind to a halt. He finished his degree and with the allure of
the Terminator carrying through to adulthood – he decided, early on,
to specialise in orthopaedics.
It was in 1999, as a first-year medical resident, that the trajectory
of his life forever shifted. Under the glowing fluorescent lights of
Saddam Hussein Medical Centre in Baghdad, Military Police
marched a queue of army deserters into a dingy operating theatre
where Al Muderis and his peers were prepping for the day.
Their orders were concise – by decree ‘115/1994’ of the constitution,
the doctors were to amputate the ears of each deserter. The lead
surgeon, citing the Hippocratic Oath, refused. He was taken to the
hospital’s parking lot, briefly interrogated and shot dead in full view
of his colleagues.
“If anyone shares his view, step forward,” stated a brutish officer.
“Otherwise, carry on.”
Al Muderis, in shock, could calculate
only one path to escape – hiding in the
women’s changing room. He quietly
slunk out of the operating theatre and
locked himself into a cubicle.
Hunched over porcelain, listening
to each passing voice and footstep with
dread, Al Muderis’ treacherous journey
had begun. Hours later, several people
entered the changing room. Al Muderis’
chest tightened. But the steps belonged
to nurses. The bloody deed had been
completed – work finished for the day.
As horrifying as it was, sitting on that
toilet was one of the last moments of
reprieve Al Muderis would have for
more than a year.
The budding surgeon’s family
smuggled him out of the country and into Jordan. Al Muderis crossed
the border in a car, with around US$20,000 strapped to his gut –
a parting gift from his devastated mother. Eventually, he fled
to Indonesia, where he handed over his passport and paid a people
smuggler for a spot on a small fishing boat bound for Australia.
The then-27-year-old survived a harrowing 36-hour journey,
doing his best to care for pregnant and elderly passengers, all sardined
in a mass of humanity that was soon stained by urine and vomit.THEIR ORDERS
WERE CONCISE...
THE DOCTORS
WERE TO AMPUTATE
THE EARS OF
EACH DESERTER.