Morteza Baharloo

Morteza Baharloo was born in Darab, Fars, Iran, in 1961. His family, the Baharloo (also spelled Baharlou or Baharlu), is of an old dynastic and tribal confederacy in Iran. Linguistically Turkic and culturally Iranian, the history of the family in Iran, the Balkans, Central Asia and India goes back to the 1250s AD. Baharloo was educated in Shiraz through the 11th grade before his immigration to the United States, where he was "displaced" in Salt Lake City, Utah for his final year of high school.

After high school, Baharloo wished to pursue literature and the arts. However, due to eventual extortion from his family, he reached an academic concession with his mother to study pharmacy. This landed him in rural Oregon in 1979, attending Oregon State University. In 1985, he and his family moved to Houston, Texas where he began a career in clinical pharmacy at the Texas Medical Center. Four years later, he conceptualized and co-founded Healix, Ltd, where he serves as the Chairman of the Board. Currently, Healix employs 650 clinical and other professionals with affiliates in 22 states, representing 350 subspecialty physicians. Healix's sister company, HLX Pharmaceuticals, the scientific aspect of which Baharloo leads, is presently building an intravenous antibiotic manufacturing factory in Texas. Baharloo is also a partner in Timegate Studios, a Houston based computer gaming company. Timegate Studios has released numerous games, some of which with Iranian themes.

Baharloo returned to painting, poetry, and other literary pursuits during the mid 1990s. He started an obsessive campaign of reading, research and writing. Baharloo's novel, The Quince Seed Potion, was released in November 2004 by the fiction imprint of Rowman and Littlefield. He devoted most of 2005 and 2006 to researching the history, culture and contributions of his ancestors to Iran and the surrounding region. Over the past two years, he has compiled Shredded Robes of Honor, Discarded Banners of Identity, an extensive work that covers the history and symbolism of clothes and fabric in Iran with a concentration on tribal and bucolic costumes. He uses the Baharlu as a model for this illustrated book (publication pending in 2009). Continuing a long familial tradition of global exploration and "nomadism," Baharloo divides his time in Houston, Manhattan, Shiraz, Iran and his birthplace, Darab (where he lives in his late great uncle and grandfather's adjoining residences which he has recently restored). He considers his two daughters, Sahar, a graduate of Reed College in linguistics, and Yasmine, Public Relations major at Columbia College of Arts in Chicago, his best friends.