Sisters dream of travelling the world together after surgery
The two law school graduates also hope to move back to Iran and live together while Laleh chases her dream of being a journalist and Ladan works as a lawyer, said Bahar Niko, 24, a teacher who has become the sisters’ closest friend since they arrived Singapore in November.
“It’s not that they’re unhappy with each other, they just want to have careers of their own,” Ms Niko said. “They never think about marriage, just their careers.”
After a lifetime of compromises on everything from when to wake up each day to what career to pursue, the sister decided they preferred to risk surgery that doctors warn could kill one or both rather than continue living joined.
But the twins told friends they never could walk away from each other even after a lifetime of trying.
“When we first opened our eyes to see the light, we wanted to be separated,” Ladan, the more extroverted sister, told reporters last month.
The sisters were born into a poor family of 11 children in Firouzabad, southern Iran, but they grew up away from their family in the capital Tehran under the care of doctors.
Though they were happy as little girls, they always had cuts and scratches on their hands, legs, and faces from falling down while they played, a friend said in Tehran.
“When they were only eight years old, one day I saw them trying to walk in opposite directions. But that was not possible. Then, they cried because of the pain caused,” she said.
As schoolgirls they used to cheat on tests by whispering answers to each other, they admitted last month.
The Iranian government eventually concluded it would be nearly impossible for the sisters to compete individually in university entrance exams so it granted them a joint scholarship to study law at Tehran University in 1994.
However, the sisters were distracted by their wish to be separated and it took them six-and-a-half years instead of the normal four to obtain their degrees.
Their hopes were high in 1996 when Iranian doctors organised for them to travel to Germany for tests ahead of possible surgery.
However, they returned to Tehran heartbroken after German surgeons told them the surgery was too dangerous as the sisters shared a common vein that drains blood from their brains. The twins said they later became depressed and distrustful of people who offered to help them. Those feelings deepened when their doctors were unable to provide documents backing up their credentials.
Their hopes for separation were rekindled after they heard about Dr Keith Goh’s successful separation of a pair of 18-month-old Nepalese twins who were similarly joined at the head. An Associated Press reporter in Tehran helped put them in contact with Dr Goh last year.
“Our best days began after our arrival in Singapore in November. We are writing our memoirs everyday and are impatiently waiting for the big day to come,” Ladan wrote last month.
Singapore’s small Iranian community quickly became a surrogate family to the twins. They began studying English and Dr Goh started studying Farsi so they could communicate better.
The twins loved shopping for cosmetics and clothes, Ms Niko said.
They bought larger sized clothing so they could pull it up over their feet, she said.
“They didn’t feel embarrassed at all about going out,” Ms Niko said. “In fact they feel very proud. They do not want people to feel sorry for them.”
Farzaneh Farhadi, a friend who has known the sisters for 14 years and flew to Singapore from Tehran to be with them before the surgery said the twins plan to travel the world together after the surgery, visiting a different country each year.
“We are individual people and we have different ideas about our lives,” Laleh said last month explaining why they needed to be separated.
“Actually we are opposites,” Ladan interrupted, laughing.
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