Dr. Mo H. Saidi was born in Iran and grew up in Ahvaz, southwest of Iran, near the Persian Gulf. Saidi moved to Tehran and entered the Tehran University Medical School in 1960. After graduating from Tehran Medical School, Saidi attended 18 months of military obligation in the Iranian Air Force at Vahdati Air Force Base near Dezful, Iran. After marrying his first wife in Tehran, Saidi came to the United States in 1969 as an immigrant to continue postgraduate medical education in NJ. After completing the obstetrics and gynecology residency at NJ College of Medicine and a fellowship in gynecology-oncology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Saidi decided to return to Iran and practice medicine in his home country. After a short venture as an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Tehran Medical School in charge of the gynecology-oncology section, dissatisfied with the Iranian socio-political environment during Shah’s repressive regime, he left Iran and returned to San Antonio, Texas. Saidi secured a position as a junior faculty member in the UTHSCSA, but shortly after that, he also set up an OB/GYN private practice on the city’s northeast side. Saidi became an American citizen in September 1975. Along with a teaching position at the UTHSCSA and performing advanced gynecology endoscopic surgeries, he started to collect data regarding his innovative work and published the advantages of endoscopic and minimally invasive procedures in medical journals. As a physician, he wrote a book titled Female Sterilization: A Handbook for Women and published more than 40 scientific papers and articles in medical journals.​

 

Saidi says that Persians grew up with poetry and cherish it. “In high school, we often played mosha’ereh, or ‘exchanging couplets.’ One person recites a classic Persian verse, and the next has to find a suitable response using another well-known verse.” So, he claims that Persians are poets. Since saidi was 7, he wanted to be a writer. Instead, under family pressure, he became a physician, but he never relinquished his dream. Finding prose writing in English a challenge, from 2000, Saidi used the extended visits with his son in Boston, enrolled in graduate summer courses at Harvard University, and began to write prose and poetry in English. After six summers in Boston, he eventually received a master’s degree in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard at age 65. During these summers of reading American poetry and prose, he was inspired by a great physician-writer, William Carlos Williams, and his work.

 

​​Williams was a busy physician, yet also a remarkable poet and writer. Although Saidi had a late start in writing, the experience of trying to get educated and write in a second language has been enjoyable and has filled his life with excitement. Now that Saidi is a retired physician, writing gives him a sense of purpose and hope. There are memories and events in his life that, in many ways, may be ordinary and familiar to a reader, but when you consider the cultural, political, and geographical diversities that saidi has encountered and experienced, his writings will become unique and offer an uncommon perspective. Therefore, he hopes you enjoy walking beside him and seeing the world through his eyes.