Mahmood Ahmadi was a surgeon at the Veterans’ Affairs (VA) Hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida, USA. He was born into a privileged family in the small agricultural village of Vastan in Iran not far from Tehran. As an infant, he survived an earthquake to which many of his siblings succumbed. Growing up he enjoyed a multicultural upbringing and was exposed to many different customs and beliefs, from Kurdish bareback riding to the Judaic roots of Purim in Persia. Like his older brother, Abdol Ghana Ahmadi, a noted lawyer and jurist in Iran, Mahmood possessed a superior intellect. He combined this with a familial motivation to master his scholarly pursuits in all disciplines, not just science and medicine. Mahmood developed his addiction to surgery at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences and received his MD in 1960. He pursued two years of missionary work in rural Iran, followed by a rotating internship and residency in Canton, Ohio, USA at the Aultman Hospital and then a general surgery residency in Cleveland, Ohio at Fairview Park Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital under the Case Western University system. His chief of surgery there, Charles Marks, recommended that he seek further training at the Royal College of Surgeons in England. After completing a paper with Marks in 1969 (‘Agnogenic myeloid metaplasia: role of splenectomy’ *Postgrad Med J*. 1969 Apr;45[522]:261-5), Ahmadi crossed the pond to London to immerse himself in his studies with a clinical appointment at King Edward Memorial Hospital, riding around town in a red Triumph convertible. His rewards for his efforts were the fellowship on 7 July 1971, when he passed his exams, and, more importantly, Marsha Savage of Centreville, New Brunswick, Canada, whom he married on 22 August 1970. After gaining his FRCS, Ahmadi went back to his native country in 1972, to work as a general surgeon in Qom. His thirst for mastery of advanced surgical techniques took him and his family back to Cleveland, Ohio from 1974 to 1976, where he received cardiothoracic residency training at St Vincent Charity Medical Center. He again returned to his homeland to practise his newly-honed skills in Tabriz and then Tehran. He subsequently rose steadily in clinical reputation to university faculty representative to the Shah in his specialty. Throughout his rise to professional eminence in his home country he always expressed a desire ‘to do my best to help the people’. He did this financially, spiritually and medically. Unfortunately, he had to survive another earthquake in the form of the Iranian Revolution at the end of 1978. Marsha and their daughters took the last Pan Am flight out of Tehran on the day after Christmas. Mahmood made it out on Easter weekend of 1979 after tending to casualties of both sides of the hostilities. They were united at the Savage family homestead in New Brunswick, Canada. Mahmood had the equivalent of $47 in his pocket. Always looking forward, he took a fellowship at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston under Denton Cooley from July 1979, and then worked as a general, thoracic and vascular surgeon at the Aroostook Medical Center (AMC) in Presque Isle, Maine, the town across the border from Centreville. After nine years as a mostly-solo practitioner with a splendid reputation for excellence in surgical care, Mahmood joined the four-man group of surgeons assembled by David Sensenig. For six more years, this surgical programme was fully funded under the auspices of US Senator George Mitchell of Maine, at the VA Hospital at Togus, Maine, where I first met him. We had a challenging and interesting practice covering the full scope of surgery except open heart surgery. After Senator Mitchell retired, the Togus inpatient programme was cut back and Mahmood and I were reassigned as part of the start-up crew for the newest VA Hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1995. For five more clinical years at the VA, Mahmood became the go-to guy when patients presented for complex surgical intervention. He also returned to Iran on short sabbaticals to practise open heart surgery at a university hospital in Tehran and was appointed to the Iranian Board of Cardiothoracic Surgery. Ahmadi retired from the VA and clinical practice in 1999 mostly because of concerns about the hospital’s inefficient IT revolution. We remained close friends for another 20 years. I remember driving him to Hollywood, Florida, where I worked as a surgical oncologist so that he could observe his true passion, cardiac surgery, after a good breakfast in the physicians’ cafeteria. He eventually befriended every member of that department headed then by Michael Rosenbloom. He called them his cousins. Throughout his life, he maintained an interest in comparative religious philosophy, liturgy and history. He was a self-proclaimed Deist, Sufi and follower of the poet Rumi for most of his life, but accepted the sacraments of the Catholic faith just before his death. He befriended many clergy of nearly all denominations as his cousins as long as they shared his inherent honesty and concern for individuals. Many of us counted on his fatherly support as well as biblical knowledge to help us through difficult times. He honoured me, a colleague and friend for his last 30 years, by presiding during the funeral of my eldest son. As a young man, Ahmadi was an active and accomplished intercollegiate athlete, competing throughout the Middle East and Europe, as a champion weightlifter. He developed immensely appealing social skills, which, with his handsome countenance, muscular appearance and vitality, earned him a thick address book, of which he was proud. He was certainly not shy with the opposite sex. He was a polyglot by inclination and personal experience. Ahmadi passed away on 19 November 2019 at his home in Jupiter, Florida from a brief illness arising from acute myeloid leukaemia. He was 82. He was survived by his widow Marsha, three daughters, six grandchildren and dozens of devoted friends and colleagues. Ahmadi was truly a citizen of and surgeon to the world: all of his cousins like me really miss him.