Going Back (PDF)

by Mujen Al Muderis, Patrick Weaver

In Munjed Al Muderis’s memoir Walking Free, he described his experience as a refugee fleeing Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, his terrifying sea journey to Australia, and the brutal mandatory detention he faced in the remote north of Western Australia. The book also detailed his early work as a pioneering orthopedic surgeon at the cutting edge of world medicine. In Going Back, Munjed shares the extraordinary journey that his life-changing new surgical technique has taken him on. Through osseointegration, he implants titanium rods into the human skeleton and attaches robotic limbs, allowing patients genuine, effective, and permanent mobility. Munjed has performed this operation on hundreds of Australian civilians, wounded British soldiers who’ve lost legs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a survivor of the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand. But nothing has been as extraordinary as his return to Iraq after 18 years, at the invitation of the Iraqi government, to operate on soldiers, police, and civilian amputees wounded in the horrific war against ISIS. These stories are both heartbreaking and full of hope, and are told from the unique perspective of a refugee returning to the place of his birth as a celebrated international surgeon.