Characters of the County: Through the Lens with Dr. Rifat Zaidi

Life presents itself in a series of challenges, and how individuals rise and respond to these trials reveals who they are. For Rifat Zaidi, of Newcastle, a well-known orthopedic surgeon at LincolnHealth’s Miles Campus in Damariscotta, award-winning photographer, cook, and director of a girl’s school in Pakistan, the way he’s met those challenges has revealed his determination and his imagination.

“My mantra is if anyone else can do it, so can I,” Zaidi said. “And when you pick up something you try to excel at it.”

Originally from Lahore, Pakistan, Zaidi moved to Newcastle with his wife, Tasneem, and their two children, Sammy and Izzy, in 2002 after visiting the state over a long weekend and loving the area.

Zaidi began work as an orthopedic surgeon, specializing in bones, joints, ligaments, tendons, and muscles that are essential to movement. Zaidi said he had always wanted to work in orthopedics, something he knew that from the start of his medical training.

“I didn’t want to do anything else,” Zaidi said.

Despite Zaidi’s hyper-focus on the specialty of his medical career, he emphasized that, in life, it’s important not to be a one-trick pony and he’s enjoyed success in many mentally demanding endeavors. In his youth in Lahore, while he wasn’t musically inclined like his brothers, he enjoyed playing chess.

“I had no music in me,” Zaidi said. “I was more of a physical person.”

Zaidi said he also enjoyed playing cricket as a kid and played up until he was 13 or 14, where he played in the highest level of national tournament in Pakistan. When he won, however, he moved on.

“Once I achieved that, I moved on. My goal was to become a physician,” Zaidi said.

Nowadays, he doesn’t play chess as often, or even cricket, but he continues to moments of triumph outside of his orthopedic practice, especially in his photography.

“There are pictures everywhere,” Zaidi said. “There’s a photograph in everything, just a matter of getting a different perspective to it, and everyone has their own perspective.”

With smartphones, Zaidi said everyone has a camera at their fingertips, so it really gets down to the imagination of the individual to find “the picture in everything.”

“It’s not about your camera, it’s about your idea,” Zaidi said.

His work as an orthopedic surgeon is not so different from his approach to taking photos: when he’s fixing broken bones and solving other problems he has to address them quickly and in real time.

“When you see a photo, you have to figure out what can I do to change it or how to improve it,” Zaidi said. With surgery, “you get an hour to two hours to get that jigsaw puzzle back in order, and it takes a lot of 3-D thinking and planning in your brain.”

Among Zaidi’s other photographic recognitions, he recently won the November 2023 #LCNme365 photo contest with a dynamic photo of a teepee on the Coastal Rivers Nature Center property in Damariscotta.

For Zaidi, his ventures into cooking were another problem he addressed with his “if you’re going to do it, why not do it well,” philosophy.

After graduating from Rawalpindi Medical College in 1984, he did his surgical residency in England, where he said he couldn’t stand the food.

“I couldn’t boil an egg when I left home,” Zaidi said. “But when I went to England I realized that I had to sustain myself.”

He may have gone for surgical training, but when he returned home to Pakistan for the first time he asked his mother so many questions about cooking, his father asked if he had actually gone to England for surgical training.

“I said, ‘Yeah, this is more important because I have to eat every evening and I can’t eat that crap,’” Zaidi said. “I’m not saying it was bad, it was just bad for me.”

In recent years, Zaidi has put together a cookbook, “Pakistani Cooking 101 Easy Pakistani Meals: A Guide for Beginners,” inspired by his own cooking adventures and his children coming home during college, missing the Pakistani cuisine their father made.

The book isn’t out yet, but is meant for young people starting on their own, to equip them with some basics, and for those seeking to diversity their cooking palates.

When the book is published it will be available, along with the rest of Zaidi’s photography, for purchase from rifatzaidi.com.

All the proceeds generated from his website go toward funding operation costs at an all-girls school in Basti Awan he founded in collaboration with his former medical school, Rawalpindi Medical College Overseas Foundation Inc., in 2009.

He and foundation members helped finance the school after building 322 homes in that area, which was devastated when the Indus River in Pakistan flooded in 2010.

Without the school, Zaidi said the girls wouldn’t have had any access or opportunity for education.

“It’s very emotional to see these lives change,” Zaidi said.

The first batch of students just graduated from the school and did very well on their exams, according to Zaidi. He’s excited and hopeful that the 195 girls who are in the school will make a difference in their generation and the next one by seeing the value of an education and the opportunities it can present.

“Education is something that we take for granted, but if you have not had any education, you don’t realize what education can do for you,” he said.

All proceeds from purchasing calendars and photography from his website also go towards funding the girl’s school in Pakistan. Those looking to donate to Rawalpindi Medical College Overseas Foundation, Inc. can do so at shorturl.at/absH9.

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