Izels, from the Book of Misunderstandings
Three weeks after Izel Mahmudov was awarded the Rheinach Prize for Medical Research, two FBI agents entered his laboratory and, making no effort to spare him humiliation before his colleagues, took him into custody.
“What have I done?” he asked the agents. “Where are you taking me?”
During the last years of the lengthy and brutal ethnic war in his country, Izel completed his medical studies in the relative safety of the capital. In his final year, news reached him that the village where he had grown up was attacked and his parents killed. He had no siblings and had never been close to his uncle, two aunts, or four cousins. He assumed they were either dead or scattered. Except for a few friends and his work, Izel found himself alone in the world. Like many young, educated people in his country, he was eager to get out.
Izel was lucky. He was granted a refugee visa thanks to the sponsorship of a senior researcher at Spingold-Walker Pharmaceuticals. This kind man had read a brilliant paper on which Izel’s name appeared as co-principal investigator alongside that of a well-established researcher. The Spingold-Walker scientist rightly concluded that, though the lab and whatever funds supported it belonged to the senior investigator, the work itself was Mahumudov’s. He contacted Izel through the University where he earned his degree. Izel who begged for help in emigrating and Spingold-Walker took care of everything on condition that he come and work for them.
Izel Mahmudov gratefully accepted employment with S‑W, found a studio apartment within walking distance of the laboratories, and applied for citizenship. The breakthrough that won Izel the Rheinach Prize was the first effective treatment for Hedwegh’s Sarcoma, an invariably lethal form of cancer. Thanks to Izel’s work, lives were extended and Spingold-Walker’s stock price shot up.
The post-war government in Izel’s homeland needed some time to compile its first list of war criminals. Investigations had to be conducted, witnesses interviewed, and, where they existed, records checked. The process was complicated by political compromises and bribes. Given the difficulties and the zeal of some of the investigators, errors were perhaps to be expected.
A prominent name on the list at last distributed to the world was that of Izel Mahmudev. When the war broke out, this man, a fanatic nationalist who had just completed a degree in ophthalmology, volunteered for the anti-government forces. During the years of conflict, he had charge of a prisoner-of-war camp, one notorious even amidst the general barbarity for its atrocities. In addition to murders and starvation Mahmudev presided over tortures, the most unspeakable of which he personally devised.
The inventory of wanted war criminals was turned over to the government’s Rights Violators and War Crimes Center whose first task was to crosscheck it against a list of recent visa-holders and immigrants. The investigator assigned names from K through N immediately flagged Izel Mahmudov as a person whose visa should at once be revoked and deportation proceedings opened. He did take note of the that the name on between on the war criminals list was Izel Mahmudev and Izel Mahmudov on the visa list, but a Google search informed him the two spellings of patronymic surnames are interchangeable. There were no photographs of Mahmudev available, but the information that the criminal held a medical degree confirmed that he must be the pharmaceutical researcher Mahmudov.
Izel Mahumudov’s company lawyer was skillful. He was able to keep the case dragging on for seven months after at the end of which Izel was deported.
Meanwhile, Izel Mahmudev adopted the name Istvan Markovic, preserving his old initials, and moved to a small town in a rural district far from the capital. Here he established a modest practice correcting the vision of peasants, policemen, and provincial dignitaries.
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