This is the first blog in my website, chosen because it is very dear to my heart. It is about an amazing long journey in the diaspora since I left our beloved homeland at the age of 19 to start my professional journey. At that time, I was thinking that this journey would be a short one before returning back to give our people what I am going to learn abroad. Unfortunately, my early expectation turned out to be wrong and the journey, which started in 1974, got extended to involve seven more countries across four continents from the middle East to Europe and the USA.
Throughout this long journey, the road was not always even or smooth but rather was filled with many road blocks and obstructions at both personal and professional levels. Living in different countries is not always an easy task and sometimes very challenging, especially taking into consideration that each of these “foreign “countries have its own unique social and cultural characteristic which we need to cope with; at least initially! Nonetheless, looking back, these ups and downs we faced along the way gave us the experience and the maturity we needed to cope with many other life surprises.
Finally, I like to end this short blog with a bright note by saying that this long journey ended up us landing us in an amazing country, which we consider it as the only bright spot in our darkened Middle East!. I am sure that everyone knows which country I am talking about; it is the United Arab Emirates. Certainly, my family yearn to return to their roots in our original homeland, but until this happens, we are very grateful to this country which gave us all aspect of a dignified living and an amazing lifestyle, whether it is the cleanliness, the safety, the people politeness, the law obeying culture or the countless opportunities. All of these attributes made us today very proud to call this country as “our home”!.
Dr Khalil Baroud, MD, MS, FACP