As the father of two young daughters, Dr. Thaer Ahmad sees his own children when he treats Palestinians wounded in the Israel-Hamas war.
“I’m a Palestinian who wants to see babies that look like my babies not be killed anymore,” he says in the new documentary, “American Doctor,” which opens this week in Chicago.
The film, directed by Malaysian-born, New York-based Poh Si Teng, follows three American doctors who have gone on international humanitarian missions, visiting 10 different countries over the years.
“I used to work for Al Jazeera and it was a year into the genocide, and seeing so many of my former colleagues being targeted and executed,” Teng said in a Zoom interview of what prompted her to make her first feature-length documentary.
“People were silent and still whispering about Palestinian colleagues and our peers getting killed when they had no issue at all talking about Ukrainian journalists or American journalists who were kidnapped in Ukraine or killed by Russia,” she observed.
Teng pivoted from documenting reporters in Gaza to physicians. “Americans love medical dramas. I love medical dramas. And I definitely love ‘The Pitt.’ I thought to myself, We’re gonna make ‘The Pitt.’ It’s gonna be real, and it’s gonna be set in Gaza.”
“As a filmmaker, I’m not a doctor,” added Teng. “I can’t save lives. I can just tell a story.”
“American Doctor” opens with a chaotic scene of a 10-year-old girl rushed into Nasser Medical Complex in the Gaza Strip after an Apache helicopter attack. In the next scene, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, one of Teng’s three subjects, insists the director not blur the faces of six dead babies in a photograph. Later the North Carolina orthopedic and hand surgeon vents: “I’m sorry but the rate of killing of children in Gaza is six hundred times higher than it is in Ukraine. This is sick.”
The film chronicles the doctors’ work in the field, including at Nasser when Israeli projectiles strike, killing patients — even the hospital’s sign takes a direct hit. Most Gaza medical buildings are reportedly in ruins.
The documentary also follows the doctors speaking in diverse forums. At a wintry Chicago rally, Ahmad talks about the stories of people who are killed that go untold. “I see pictures of the journalists that have been killed. I see pictures of the children that have been killed. It’s on us to make sure that their stories are told, because if you turn on the news right now, you will not hear anything about them.”
The doctors also visit congressional offices and testify before the United Nations in the film. In one scene, Ahmad testifies: “I say this as a Palestinian who yesterday had to watch a mother say that she found the body of her child outside of their house but could not find his head and spent the entire night with a flashlight going through the streets, roaming through the streets of Khan Yunis, hoping to find his head but being unsuccessful.”
Born at Cook County Hospital, 37-year-old Ahmad attended the Islamic private Universal School in southwest suburban Bridgeview where he played point guard on the basketball team. He graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and received his medical degree from Rush Medical College. He currently serves as a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago.
In a Zoom interview, Ahmad said his father immigrated to Chicago to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. At age 5 he made his first of many trips to the Middle East to visit grandparents in a Jerusalem suburb. His first NGO medical mission to the Gaza Strip was in 2009.
Ahmad told the Sun-Times he spoke out at a 2010 memorial in Grant Park for young Palestinian victims of an IDF operation: “We got together and we got 300 black balloons that signified all of the kids that had been killed. And we released these balloons.”
Pro-Palestinian protests are a family tradition. “After Sept. 11th and especially during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, every Friday me and my parents (and his three siblings) would hop on buses from Little Palestine, head to the city, and participate in these protests in downtown Chicago.” Ahmad and his wife now take their two daughters to marches.
Near the end of “American Doctor” Ahmad flies to Amman, Jordan. For the fifth time, Israeli authorities block him from crossing the border. As the sun sets he holds up his phone so his family back home can see what he sees. Afterward, he turns to the camera and says: “I have a 5-year-old daughter. In five years, she’s going to ask me: ‘What was this genocide that happened? And what did you do?’”
On a six-city tour, Po and Ahmad will appear for a Q/A at a special screening at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 26 at the Music Box Theater, 3733 N. Southport Ave. Doctors, nurses, EMTs and medical students can get complimentary tickets at watermelon.pics/adhealthcare.
“American Doctor” opens on Aug. 28 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St., and Uprising Theater & Cafe, 2905 N. Milwaukee. On Sept. 4 the documentary moves to The Wilmette Theatre at 1122 Central Ave., Wilmette. On Sept. 11 it will screen at Alamo Drafthouse Wrigleyville, 3519 N. Clark St.