ESCAPEES FROM IRAQ HOPE OLD DAYS GONE
By J.T. Morand, jtmorand@pioneerlocal.com

Pioneer Press Online
yles/currents/1386054,on-iraqdocWEB-012209-s1.arti cle
Jan 22 2009
IL

Dr. Edward Mkrdichian is keeping a closer eye on Iraq these days,
like it’s one of his patients.

Only there’s not much he can do if the condition worsens.

The Glenview neurosurgeon and his wife Susie both escaped from their
homeland Iraq during turbulent times. Now they’re concerned any
progress made in that country will go backwards if American troops
pull out too soon. In his campaign for U.S. President, Barack Obama
had said he’d like to withdraw troops by 2010, while George Bush was
reluctant to set a date or timetable.

Mkrdichian was in medical school in Iraq in 1971, when various factions
were fighting for power of the country, and Saddam Hussein’s star
was rising as a leader in the Ba’ath Party.

Christians, of which Mkrdichian was one, were constantly harassed,
and his father, who was Armenian, was detained by authorities because
they believed he was a spy with Jewish sympathies. Young doctors were
being sent to the front lines to serve as medics. Some of Mkrdichian’s
friends were conscripted into the army, never to been seen again. Some
were killed, some died early, some just disappeared.

"You age rapidly because of the tension and stress," said Mkrdichian,
"Some went into the army and never came back."

In Iraq, he explained, high school students would take a test
that often determined their future. Students who received the best
scores were placed in a medical program at the country’s colleges
and universities. Law school students fall somewhere below medical
and dental students, and no one wanted to be a lawyer in Iraq,
Mkrdichian said.

"Who are you going to fight? The government?" he laughed.

Great escapes Mkrdichian was in his third year of medical school when
his family left Iraq, but he was denied a visa. However, in 1971,
he and an uncle made their way to Lebanon, and later entered the
United States in December of that year.

He rejoined his family in Chicago, where he achieved personal and
professional success.

While in medical school, he met and married Susie, the daughter of old
family friends from Iraq, who also fled to the United States, in 1975.

Susie’s father worked as an accountant for the U.S. Embassy during
the 1960s, which made him a person of interest to authorities.

"We, as children, felt our parents were always living in fear," she
said. "Secret service agents were always monitoring their moves. We
feared our dad would be labeled."

They were going to go to Iran, but tensions between the countries
heated up and the borders closed. They changed course and traveled
to Turkey, where they stayed for six months while they obtained the
proper papers to travel on.

They could not draw attention to themselves as they left their home
in Iraq, so they each brought only one suitcase and left everything
else behind.

"Our departure (from Iraq) had to be very low key," Susie said. "We
took a train, as if we were going on vacation."

New life The couple had a daughter they named Joy. She is now in her
second year of law school.

"She had the freedom of choice," Mkrdichian said. "She wanted law."

Mkrdichian attended University of Illinois at Chicago, went to medical
school at Rush University Medical Center and did his residency at
Northwestern, where he met Dr. Leonard Cerullo, his future business
partner in the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch.

Cerullo sent Mkrdichian to Mayo Clinic to do a fellowship in
stereotactic neurosurgery before they founded, with others, CNN.

"I saw what a good doctor, what a good human being, what a good surgeon
he was, and how loyal and dedicated he was," Cerullo said. "He had
the characteristics I was looking for in a partner."

Mkrdichian has performed more than 3,000 brain and spine surgeries,
and is director of clinical neurosurgery at CINN and assistant
professor of neurosurgery at Rush Medical College.

"I was always intrigued by how the brain functions," Mkrdichian said.

But, he hasn’t figured out how it works when it comes to hate. The
three largest populations in Iraq — Sunni, Shia and Kurds — don’t
get along, and if American troops pull out too soon, there will be
civil war, he said.

"It would be a mistake to come out now," he said. "If we pull out now,
there’d be massacres."

Killing goes against everything he believes in.

"We (doctors) do everything we can to save one soul," he said. "In war,
hundreds of people die."

New hope The couple has never been back to Iraq since they left. Until
Saddam Hussein was captured, a visit would have been too dangerous.

"If I had gone back," Mkrdichian said, "I would have been prosecuted
for sure."

Susie, who is Assyrian, hopes to visit with Joy, if there is ever
calm in Iraq.

"I would love the opportunity for Joy to see where we came from,"
she said. "I don’t know if that will happen in our lifetime."

Although Mkrdichian and Susie hate seeing American soldiers and
Iraqis die, and share mixed feelings about going to war with Iraq in
the first place, they are happy one cause of their flight from the
country is gone.

"I’m glad," Mkrdichian said, "we took Saddam and his entourage down."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress