Trading Scalpels For Scripts

DR IMAN TAHERI NEVER IMAGINED THAT HE WOULD SOON BE TRAVELLING THE WORLD WRITING POETRY AND ACTING IN ACTION MOVIES. BUT THE STAGE IS CALLING, AND THE TRAUMA SURGEON IS GOING ALL IN.

- FARHAN SHAH

MOHAMMAD ALI'S PHOTOGRAPH hung everywhere in the house—not the boxer, but Dr. Iman Taheri’s great-grandfather, one of the first Western-educated doctors in Iran. He had travelled to Europe to study medicine when such journeys were near-legendary. For young Iman, that portrait became both compass and standard before he could even speak.

In Middle Eastern and Asian cultures, approval often comes through academic excellence. Medicine, for Iman, was both destiny and duty. He became a general surgeon, specialising in trauma and emergency medicine, later spending two years in Southeast Iran, where shootings and conflict were common.

But long before scalpels and sirens, there was poetry. Iman began writing as a teenager in a country where poetry isn't just a pastime but oxygen. Rumi, Hafez, and Omar Khayyam live in the nation’s walls and conversations. The first poem he remembers being impacted by explored teenage pain.