Dmitriy Model and Saman Soleymani are physicians and co-owners of the urgent care company Avecina, which has had its best years during the pandemic.
They also share a common bond: Both came to Jacksonville as refugees — one to escape religious and ethnic persecution, the other to escape the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War. They are two of roughly 1,000 Duval County physicians who are foreign born, according to the American Medical Association.
Life in the Soviet Union
Dmitriy Model, who is Jewish, dreamed of becoming a physician in Moscow. Working for an ambulance service, he treated stabbings and gunshot wounds on some of Moscow’s meanest streets.
Model’s dream was crushed when he spoke with the head of the medical school admissions committee. “The guy told me with your last name, you’re not going to get in.” And he didn’t.
Growing up Jewish in 1980s Soviet Union, Model experienced prejudice at an early age. He remembers the first time he was called an anti-Semitic slur and asked his parents what it meant. “I just feel like destroyed. It’s like the land is burning under you.”
In communist Soviet Union, religion of any type was spurned, Model said. He was taught scientific atheism in school. “They teach you there’s no God,” he said. “The KGB would watch everybody. They would watch every religion.”
Model lived in a district of 250,000 people where everyone knew everyone. Differences were underscored, especially in government identification cards called internal passports. At issue: space number five for nationality. More than 100 nationalities could be listed — Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Tartarian, to name a few. Another nationality: Jewish. “I felt like a herring in a cannon,” he said. “Everybody knows that in this 250,000 (person) district, there are three Jews.”
“A lot of times my dad was told, ‘You’re a good person despite you’re a Jew,’” he said.
At 16, Model was hospitalized for 10 days after a fight with schoolboys over a newly purchased hat with a Slazenger logo. He bought the Western novelty, hard to come by in the closed communist society, at a flea market with most of his monthly 37.50 ruble Lenin Stipend.
“It was cool. Like a baby having a teddy bear,” he said. It was snatched from his head and passed around. “They started fighting and after that I don’t remember.” Model still has the hat.
Model was used to being called bad names. He ignored it. “We talk about being Jewish, being kind of scared, being uncomfortable in your own skin. If someone even mentions this word (Jew) on the subway, I would get goosebumps.” He was quick to point out that prejudice was not ubiquitous; it depended on the person.
When the U.S. Embassy in Moscow began accepting applications, Model applied for asylum. He was granted refugee status. In 1991, at 21, he left his homeland for Jacksonville, where he settled with his brother and father on the Southside. His mother followed later.
Despite experiencing anti-Semitism, it was difficult to leave the Russian culture and the people he loved. “I had a girlfriend, I had a life,” he said.
Leaving Iran
Saman Soleymani left Tehran abruptly to avoid serving in the Iran-Iraq War. He was 12. “It was strictly to not have me potentially slaughtered on the front lines for a useless war,” he said. He remembers hearing the bombs and taking refuge in underground shelters.
Described as one of the most destructive conflicts in the late 20th Century, the Iran-Iraq War left an estimated 500,000 people dead from 1980-1988 and another half-million injured or hospitalized.
During the war an exit ban was put into place preventing boys 13 and older from leaving the country in order to avoid the mandatory draft, Soleymani explained. “My parents kind of went into a panic.”
His mother hatched a plan to leave the country before his 13th birthday. “Leaving the Middle East in the ‘80s to just go out into the wilderness and not knowing where we were going to wind up was really a brave move by my mother who spearheaded this whole thing,” he said.
In 1986, Soleymani, his younger brother and his mother went to Turkey. His dad stayed behind to sell their possessions. After a month, they found someone to help them get to a European country and file for refugee status. The original destination: Sweden.
But that didn’t happen. When the Soleymanis landed in Vienna late at night for their connecting flight, the airport was dead. “The problem with that was it was not just our family. You have 80 Iranians getting off a single flight and magically everyone is going to Stockholm,” Soleymani said. Suddenly, he found himself surrounded by Austrian special forces. “They popped out of every cupboard at the airport, and they surrounded us like they had arrested Osama bin Laden. It was pretty scary at the time,” he said.
Turned out the Swedish visas were fake. Sent to a refugee camp in Austria, they called the emergency number they were given in case of trouble. It was an attorney’s number. He helped get them out of the camp and apply for refugee status.
Settling in Austria
In four months, Soleymani settled into his new life. Fluent in German, he had friends and his mother had a job. He wanted to become a doctor since the age of 3, when he chased his mother down the hallways of a Tehran hospital, where she was a midwife and director of the labor and delivery department.
Realizing her son’s future in Austria could be limited, Soleymani’s mother acted again. “In the 1980s it became apparent, being in Austria, that the chance of an Iranian getting into medical school was non-existent. They were — at that time — very ethnocentric,” he said.
When a Vienna Times advertisement offered health care professionals work immigration to America, Soleymani’s mom applied. She could pick from several cities — Oakland, California; Charlotte, North Carolina; Seattle; and Jacksonville. She chose Jacksonville, where she was accepted for a position at Baptist Medical Center.
“I was crying. I didn’t want to go,” Solyemani said. In 1987, on his 13th birthday, he boarded a flight for Jacksonville. The crew helped him celebrate. “I remember the cupcake with the candle.”
Getting help
Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida helped the Model and Soleymani families get established with apartments, groceries, transportation and language classes. Both families became independent very quickly. “It's amazing and magical what people can do when they find the American dream,” said Bill Brim, president and CEO of Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida.
Brim says refugees are survivors. “What makes them so resilient is what they’ve been through — wars, violence, and some come from refugee camps not knowing when they’ll get out. They’ve overcome mental health challenges and integrate into our society. They’ve been through so much to get here,” he said.
The doctors, Brim said, are prime examples of people who came into our country and achieved great success. ‘It’s their tenacity, work ethic, focus and having a plan to live out the American dream, something we take for granted,” he said.
Model also credits a mentor he met at a thrift shop with helping him assimilate. He gave him rides, advice and, through a connection, helped him land his first full-time job at Memorial Hospital as a patient escort. Model later became a nurse extender, working to pay tuition while attending college.
Adjusting
Model found English — the Latin alphabet — and the non-metric system of measurement challenging. “I tried to make oatmeal. What’s ‘oz.’? – I didn’t know what ounces were,” he said.
Language was a challenge for Soleymani too. He entered Southside Junior High (now Southside Middle School) mid-year, not knowing a word of English. “I was bullied by everybody. I was bullied by the whites, I was bullied by the Blacks, I was bullied by the Mexicans. I was coming in as a Middle Eastern kid,” he said. “I was the bottom of the totem pole.”
That changed after he became fluent in English and relied on his martial arts training in fights. “They called me the Karate Kid,” he said. Soleymani says he holds no grudges, didn’t have a victim mentality, and always pressed forward. Despite grade school bullying, he says he’s never openly experienced racism or prejudice in America.
Dreams realized
Graduating from Englewood High School at 15, Soleymani enrolled at the University of North Florida, where he befriended Model in a microbiology class. “Every time we would ace a test, our big gift to ourselves was to go to the Outback Steakhouse and order the Outback Special, which I remember clearly was $11.95 and that would get you a steak, a baked potato and two sides,” he said.
Almost 30 years later, the internal medicine physicians treat patients at their six urgent care clinics on the First Coast. By seeing and testing more than 155,000 patients for COVID during the first two years of the pandemic, the company quadrupled its staff, half of whom are immigrants. “I’m so thankful for this country and the opportunity it has given me,” Soleymani said.
“If you were a Las Vegas odds maker and you had to put odds of a 13-year-old Iranian boy coming to Jacksonville, Florida — that doesn’t speak a word of English — not coming from a wealthy family, basically coming as a refugee immigrant and fast forward 30 years … the odds would really not be smart to put large sums of money on me to get where I am now.”
Model appreciates the freedoms he has in America. It took many years of living in the U.S to be comfortable in his own skin. “I can compare it with PTSD. It took me probably after being here for 25 years not to be scared of being a Jew, but be proud of it.” Today he embraces his Jewish identity, freely attends Chabad and enjoys serving the First Coast community.
Full circle
Last August, the doctors spearheaded a fundraiser for Afghan refugees resettling in Jacksonville through Lutheran Social Services, the same organization that helped them integrate decades earlier.
“Seeing kids, adults running towards airplanes, hanging off airplane landing gear, falling to their death because they’re so desperate to get out of that country. It really touched a place that hadn’t been touched in a while,” Soleymani said.