Iraq to Geelong: Surgeon's 'lucky escape'

"When you are young, you look at the future destroyed ahead of you and try to get away."

Saleh Abbas has been escaping for most of his life – and he knows how lucky he has been.

As a teenager, he left the harsh existence of farm life in rural Iraq to study medicine in Baghdad at his father's behest.

His brother and cousin were not so fortunate – they died on the front lines of the 1980-88 war with Iran.

"I avoided becoming a soldier by sheer luck. As one of the top 10 students at medical school, I was exempt from military service," he recalls now, decades later, as an accomplished surgeon working for Epworth HealthCare.

His senior position as an Associate Professor at one of Victoria's newest private hospitals, Epworth Geelong, is in stark contrast to his early medical experience in his homeland during the 1991 Gulf War.

"It was full-on; there was a lot of action around that period. When Baghdad was bombed, I was in the hospital. I slept in a side room for four years because I didn't have a place of my own," he said.

"When the war ended, the economy collapsed in Iraq. There were 20 million people in what was basically an open-air prison, with no job opportunities."

A/Prof Abbas escaped again – this time to Yemen in 1992, where he faced more poverty, poor healthcare facilities, and exposure to illnesses he had never before encountered.

After four years there he found sanctuary in New Zealand, where he fulfilled his long-time dream of training to become a surgeon – and his first child arrived amid the newfound stability.

"It was a huge shift in terms of culture, with beautiful mountains, everything green, up-to-date facilities – it was a real eye-opener. That was where everything changed for me," he said.

In 2009, A/Prof Abbas moved across the Tasman and took full advantage of what he now calls "a combination of luck and hard work".

"I started official training for liver surgeons. It was a new thing in Australia then. I was in the first group, there was just four of us, to become officially trained as liver and pancreatic surgeons." 

A/Prof Abbas began operating at Epworth Geelong when the hospital opened in 2016, treating patients who have liver and pancreatic cancers and adrenal tumours.

"Geelong has been really good to us," he said.

His quiet life on Victoria's Surf Coast with his wife and three children has given him the opportunity to write his memoir – titled 'Little Shepherd' – and reflect on his life's journey.

"It has been emotionally challenging. Some of the stories are sad, bitter memories. To some extent it is humbling, but losing my brother was a big trauma," he said.

"Telling that story did give me a sense of pride rather than feeling bitter and betrayed. Basically, my brother died for us."

His brother's child, though, is following in A/Prof Abbas' footsteps – studying at medical school in Baghdad.

And he still goes back home every couple of years to visit his parents, remembering the opportunity they gave him.

"My father suffered from poverty all his life. It was a difficult life and he didn't think being a farmer was a sustainable thing to do, in semi-desert, with no running water," A/Prof Abbas said.

"He wanted us to be educated, go to the cities and live better than he did."

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