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Palestine-born physician happy with desert move

June 19, 1989

By Rick Bonino
Staff writer - Spokesman Review

EPHRATA, Wash. — Mohammad Said always dreamed of living by the ocean.  Born in Palestine and trained as a doctor in Spain, he practiced in Canada before coming to the United States in 1974 and traveling around Wyoming and the Dakotas. 

But when it came time to settle down and raise his three children, hopped on Highway 2 and headed west.  Along the way he heard about a dying doctor in Ephrata who needed someone to take over the practice. Said stopped and checked it out, but wasn’t sure. “I still wanted the ocean,” he said. 

Two days on the Olympic Peninsula dampened his enthusiasm. “All the time I was there it was rain, rain, rain,” Said said. “I said, No way.’” 

So he returned to the desert to become one of Ephrata’s four physicians, and one of its few foreigners.   His wife opened a beauty shop in Said  Moses Lake, and they bought a farm  nearby.

Like his neighbors, Said soon eased into a routine of Rotary and Elks club meetings. “Fortunately, people in this area aren’t as conservative as you might think,” be said. “I think we’re very well accepted.” 

Unlike his neighbors, he also became active in international politics. It began when he helped write a resolution calling for a negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which was adopted at last year’s state Democratic Party convention. 

That won Said invitations last December to address the Palestinian National Congress in Algiers, and to accompany a Palestine Liberation Organization delegation to Geneva for peace talks. 

“I’ve considered myself an activist all my life,” said Said, 50. “I’m very much for the little guy." 

Along with a Palestinian home- land, he has another, smaller hope for world peace - making sister cities of Ephrata and Bethlehem, its biblical namesake.

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