› Back to the Beginning
Back to the Beginning IN BAHRAIN IN 1996, RENOWNED PLASTIC SURGEON, PROFESSOR TARIQ SAEED FOUNDED A CLINIC WHICH GREW TO BECOME A HOSPITAL DEVOTED TO PLASTIC SURGERY AND ALLIED SPECIALTIES. HE TRAINED IN IRELAND, THE UK AND THE USA AND HOLDS FELLOWSHIPS IN SURGERY FROM THE ROYAL COLLEGES OF SURGEONS IN IRELAND AND EDINBURGH. WE SPOKE TO HIM ABOUT HIS CAREER, HIS VARIED EXPERIENCES AND HIS LIFE OUTSIDE WORK… rofessor Tariq Saeed was born and grew up in Bahrain, as one of eight children – “like a big Irish family”, he says, educated initially by Italian nuns at the Sacred Heart School. “They instilled in me discipline and a love of art,” he remembers. “First woodcarving, then later drawing and painting.” From the Sacred Heart School, he progressed to the local government school, where he did well academically. “My father, Mohamed Saeed, was a college graduate. He studied literature, wrote poetry and published a number of books,” explains Professor Saeed, “but he was a manager by profession. When I was around five or six, he was offered a job in Saudi Arabia working with an oil company. It was a difficult decision for him to make, leaving Bahrain and his family of nine, at a time when the only means of travel was by boat. He knew, however, that it would allow him to provide better for his family, and so for most of our lives my father lived abroad. My mother Sakina was a very wise, gentle lady and an excellent mother. She made sure we were all loved, supported and educated.” Professor Saeed’s father inspired the young Tariq to pursue medicine as a career. Bahrain did not have a medical school at the time, so in order to achieve this, he too had to leave home. “Despite not having any medical background, my father always held the profession in the highest regard,” Professor Saeed explains. “He would always say that as a doctor, you could go anywhere in the world, and be able to help and provide care for others, while leading a comfortable life. My father passed away in 2016 at the age of 89. Talking to him in his later years, it was clear that had he got the opportunity, he would have become a doctor himself.” “If I’m being honest, at that time my love and passion was for art. I would have loved to pursue a career as an artist, but I was drawn to the idea of learning how to be able to care for people in their time of need. So when I finished school, and the opportunity arose to study medicine, I jumped at the chance. I left home to study at Basra University in Iraq. “Iraq was a prosperous country in the 1970s, bustling with life. Basra University was one of the best universities in the Arab world and the standard of education we received there was excellent. Despite this, the first couple of years were a struggle. I was fascinated by what I was learning through my studies, but leaving home for the first time and being away from my mother and siblings was immensely difficult. The only contact I had with home was through letters, which took three or four weeks to arrive. Not only was I homesick, but I also struggled with the politics of Iraq, which impacted on everyone’s lives, including its students’. Thankfully, as the years went by, I was able to overcome my homesickness, and navigate the politics by focusing on my studies. “The defining moment for me came in my third year of medical school,” 8
Professor Tariq Saeed, FRCSI (1984)
