Where I Was Born: Dr. Joseph Plumb Cochran
After studying medicine in America, Dr. Joseph Plumb Cochran returns to Urmia with his wife, Catherine, determined to build a life of service. In nineteenth-century Persia, he devotes himself to establishing a hospital, training doctors, and treating people across boundaries of language, faith, and social standing.
Disease and political unrest bring demands that reach far beyond his medical work. As Joseph becomes part of the community’s hopes and struggles, personal loss begins to reshape the family life he cherishes. Beside him, Catherine searches for her own sense of belonging in a land far from the America she knows.
Their shared life unfolds into a deeply human story of compassion, sacrifice, and the enduring ties between people and the places they call home.
Rooted in the life of Dr. Joseph Plumb Cochran, Where I Was Born is a lyrical historical novel by Iranian poet and writer Esmaiel Yourdshahian. Spanning America and Iran, it brings together an intimate family story and a portrait of a society in upheaval, exploring love, grief, faith, and the search for belonging.
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About Esmaiel Yourdshahian
Esmaiel Yourdshahian, who writes under the pen name Pendar Urmiaei, is an Iranian poet, novelist, researcher and occasional painter. He was born in Urmia, Iran. Although his official birth date is recorded as March 25, his mother maintained that he was born on February 17, on a cold winter morning.
Raised among music, poetry and storytelling, Yourdshahian was introduced to Iranian and European literature and music by his mother, whom he considers his first teacher. The songs, legends and oral traditions of the local communities of Azerbaijan also had a lasting influence on his literary imagination.
He began writing poetry and fiction in adolescence, composing his first poem at fourteen. During his university years in Tehran, he met the distinguished scholar Parviz Natel Khanlari, who later introduced him to the renowned poet Nader Naderpour. Both played an important role in his literary development.
Yourdshahian studied culture and civilisation as well as social psychology, and has spent much of his life teaching and conducting research in Urmia. Migration, memory, identity and displacement are recurring themes in his work. His novel Autumn, or Hunting Gazelles at Dusk, inspired by the dispersal of his family, was first published in 1998 and republished in 2016.
Throughout his career, he has published twelve poetry collections, ten novels, four children’s books, seven works of research and philosophy, and forty-seven scholarly and literary articles. Writing in Persian, he views literature as a way of crossing geographical, ethnic and national boundaries and creating a deeper connection among people throughout the world.
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