Muhammed Ahmed Ibrahim Ali was born in Dongola, Sudan, in 1946 and works as a general practitioner at the hospital in Sisimiut, Greenland. His father was a general in the Egyptian/Sudanese army, and he has 14 siblings, all of whom have the same mother, whose family immigrated to Sudan from North Africa.

Muhammed Ali lives in Sisimiut

The father did not want his son to be educated under the English colonial hegemony of the day and placed him at the age of four in an Egyptian boarding school. He wound up staying for 18 years.

He spent every summer with his family in Sudan, but his Egyptian boarding school background made him different. In Sudan, there was a very old tradition of adorning oneself with deep scars on ones skin and, in order to demonstrate courage and strength and to put a stop to increasing taunting, Muhammed at the age of 11 sought out a quack doctor and asked him to make three deep cuts in each of his cheeks. The result was quite astounding and so was the reaction.

As punishment, he was thrashed by virtually all of his male relatives. His mother never forgave him and would have nothing more to do with him. He had brought shame upon the family by descending to such a primitive ritual. Only his father was compassionate.
- The older I became, the more I regretted my scars – he says.
But that did not keep him from completing his degree in medicine at the University of Cairo in 1968, graduating at the top of his class.
He moved back to Sudan to work as a doctor but only found abysmal employment. When a classmate called him from Denmark and offered him a job at Esbjerg Hospital, he accepted at once. Muhammed was put in the X-ray department and quickly learned to say the most essential phrases in Danish: Hold your breath, now breathe. That was enough!
He met a Danish nurse and married her in 1972. He adopted her three children and they had two more together. He learned the fundaments of Danish by reading Donald Duck comics to the children.

Then, the Danish Board of Health stepped in, requiring additional training, and he began his rotation in various cities in Jutland: Esbjerg, Rudkøbing, Sønderborg, Ålborg, Nykøbing Falster. After ten years of an itinerant life, he finished as a gynecologist in 1982. It was hard on family life, and Muhammed hoped to get a permanent position that would bring the family stability, but the itinerant life continued.

Permanent positions eluded him and his pride forbade him from going on the dole, despite the fact that his wife with the usual Danish consciousness of gender roles had begun to demand greater participation in the obligations of family life. He understood his wife’s attitude, but he was restless and did not feel he could compromise. He worked for a year in northern Sweden, for a year in Saudi Arabia and then went to Greenland for the first time in 1991, taking a replacement position. Things were getting worse and worse on the family front and, in 1993, he was divorced.

Since then, he has worked in Greenland. And he loves Nanortalik most of all.
He was granted Danish citizenship in 1984 and was given permission to retain his Sudanese passport. However, Greenland is his final destination. He does not think the consulting physicians at Danish hospitals have it in them to take on a doctor named Muhammed Ali. Not because they are personally prejudiced, but because they can predict that the xenophobia in the Danish population will trigger a negative reaction to doctors of his sort. And a sensible hospital administrator will try to avoid problems in advance.

What he misses most from his homeland is the Nile and what he most appreciates in Greenland is the mountains. He is not afraid of challenging nature and, on his days off, he often goes out into the mountains with his crampons and ice axes. Once, a thick fog took him by surprise and he was trapped in the mountains for 33 hours. He only survived, because he kept moving and never gave in to the desire for rest.