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The invitation was for the trip of a lifetime. Dr. Neda Shamie, a
prominent Portland eye surgeon, would get to see the place where she
was born.

To say yes, though, would be to return to Iran, the country she and her family fled 26 years earlier.

Friends and patients, alarmed, warned her against it. Too dangerous, they said. One patient left her three voice messages.

Yet
Shamie, who came to America as a child, considered herself an Iranian.
How blessed it would be, she thought, to circle back to where her
journey began.

The path to Oregon had not been easy. A few
years after the 1979 Iranian revolution, Shamie's parents, fearing for
their lives, packed up their daughter and left everything behind to
move to California.

Shamie ended up becoming a doctor, following in her father's footsteps, and four years ago moved to Portland to join the Devers Eye Institute, a part of Legacy Health System. She specializes in cornea transplants, helping people see again.

Sought
out by other surgeons, Shamie had finished a speech to doctors in San
Francisco last year when an Iranian surgeon asked if he could have a
word. He wanted Shamie to come to Tehran to be one of five keynote
speakers -- and the only woman -- at the annual meeting of the ... >>>