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portraits

    »     AMARILLO ISD

he operating room doesn’t sound exactly the way Dina Saleem thought 
it would. Of course there’s the expected beeping of machinery and 
clanking of surgical tools. But there’s also the music. “They put on 
really nice music. Most of the time it’s country,” laughs Dina. 

Neither does the internal anatomy of a person look exactly the way 

Dina imagined. “It’s beautiful,” she says of the human heart. “Much 
better than the pictures.”

None of Dina’s experiences in the operating room match what she imagined. But 

then, Dina, a Tascosa High School and Amarillo Area Center for Advanced Learning 
(AACAL) senior, never thought she’d fi nd herself in an OR as a high school student, 
witnessing major surgeries. “The surgeries are long, but they are amazing,” she says, 
the profoundness of the experience not lost on her. “The surgeons are like God in the 
OR. They stop the heart and then put it back to working again. That’s godly.”  

Dina exudes confi dence as she talks about her own divine dreams. “I want to do 

big surgeries. My dream is to do a heart transplant.” She’s so at ease with her plans 
for the future, it would seem nothing is out of reach. It is because of where she’s been 
and what she has overcome that Dina is so fearless about where she’s headed. 

“I came to America three years ago at the age of 16,” she says.  After witnessing 

their once beautiful Syria destroyed by warring religious and political extremists, 
Dina’s family emigrated in search of safety and a better life. In America, Dina says 

Heartbroken

 over the 

destruction of her 
homeland, Dina fi nds 
safety in America and 
an internship she hopes 
puts her on the path to 
one day repairing truly 
broken hearts.

Dina Saleem and Dr. Anthony Agostini