This is Dr. Ghaleb Al Ameer, who performed the surgery on my broken toe last week. I had to see him last night because I was concerned about the bandaging on my foot. I had texted him the night before to ask about it, and he told me just to come in without an appointment. When I got to the hospital, the reception clerks were panicked and tried to convince me I had made a mistake because Ghaleb was fully booked and the clinic was closing in an hour, at 10 p.m. (And apparently people just don’t walk in without an appointment.) In the end it was as OK; he and his team saw me after hours and dressed and re-bandaged the wound, and in the midst of it all I got a few pictures of him.

Ghaleb has to be one of the nicest Saudis I have ever met – friendly, engaging, funny, kind, sympathetic and an excellent surgeon on top of it all. He did his medical studies and specialization in the States for nine years and recently returned to Saudi Arabia to work for this hospital. Right after he signed a contract with them, he received an offer for a staff position at Johns Hopkins, where he had previously turned down a fellowship. He couldn’t in good conscience break the contract, so here he is in Riyadh. I told him that while the US job would have been prestigious, challenging and satisfying, there are obviously a lot of people who need him here, one of them being me. I think he really enjoyed living in the States and assume he’ll return some day.

The previous picture gives a very long report on my Saudi hospital experience, which much to my surprise, I actually found fascinating.

A geometric gem, posted earlier: