Violet Sattari arrived in Malaysia from Iran at eight years old speaking Persian and not one word of English. The first word she learned was hello. The second was sorry.

She was so proud of knowing it that she would go into the supermarket and deliberately bump into strangers, just so she had a reason to use it.

Within a year she was fluent. Within a decade and a half she had an undergraduate degree, an honours year in biomedicine and a medical degree from the University of Melbourne.

In this conversation with Kenneth Cutbush, Violet talks about growing up between languages and countries and never quite belonging to any of them. She has an accent in Farsi, an accent in English, and Americans think she sounds foreign too. She describes it not as a loss but as an identity bespoke to her.

She is unusually honest about the parts of medicine that are rarely said aloud. The stretch of eight years of study while friends outside the bubble were living. The first time she was the only doctor on site. And a mistake. A post-operative patient who should not have had a blood thinner, and who she gave one to because she was overwhelmed and did not take the time to double check.

She has coached around thirty-eight students into medical school, and helped create an intern support officer role in Victoria for exactly the skill nobody teaches: how to say no, and how to work out what is actually urgent.

There is also a Roman coin, given to her by a patient on the spinal cord unit who told her she had given him a renewed will to live. She still carries it.

And there is a section where she is asked what she wishes people understood about Iran. Her answer is that the people are not represented by those who govern them. That this is a culture of poetry, of education, of deep family ties, and that none of it reaches the news.

Chapters

  • 00:00 What she wishes people understood about Iran
  • 01:33 Welcome. Tehran, Malaysia, Melbourne
  • 02:17 Getting off the plane at eight with no English
  • 03:27 Overhearing her parents say they were leaving for good
  • 04:09 One trip back at nine, and never again
  • 04:48 Planning a wedding without knowing if her family can come
  • 05:56 Growing up in a Malaysian apartment complex
  • 07:13 "Hello", then "sorry", and bumping into strangers on purpose
  • 08:27 The time her brother got lost fetching her
  • 09:23 An accent that belongs to no country
  • 10:41 Who Violet is underneath all of it
  • 11:14 Why medicine was decided before she was born
  • 12:14 Being labelled gifted, and what that meant in Iran
  • 13:18 Opening the Melbourne offer email in secret
  • 14:28 Eight years of study, and watching friends live
  • 16:20 The adrenaline of a diagnostic question
  • 16:46 The first time she was the only doctor on site
  • 18:42 The blood thinner she should not have given
  • 20:12 Coaching thirty-eight students into medicine
  • 22:03 Creating the intern support officer role
  • 23:26 The skill nobody teaches: discernment about urgency
  • 24:12 Whether she is a different person in Farsi
  • 25:27 What her mother teases her about
  • 27:30 The award that meant the most
  • 28:30 Iran, and what the news never shows
  • 37:53 The Roman coin from a patient on the spinal unit