Re: Off Topic War Stuff Still hurts my heart Bill


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/national/18visit.html?hp&ex=1121745600&;
en=af18cdebeb0c9257&ei=5094&partner=homepage


Iraqi Boy's Journey to Erase the Scars of War

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: July 18, 2005
WASHINGTON, July 16 - Ayad al-Sirowiy came to America this week hoping
doctors here could remove the war embedded in his face.
Thirteen years old, small and skinny, Ayad was severely burned and
blinded in one eye when an American cluster bomb blew up in his face at
the beginning of the Iraq war.
A cluster bomb left Ayad al-Sirowiy blind in one eye and peppered his
face with scars. He hides them by wearing sunglasses, even in his sleep.
Dr. Tina Alster examined Ayad and will try to remove most of his facial
scars. More Photos >
The explosion blasted thousands of fragments into his skin and left
scars deeper than that. The village boys tease him, calling him "Mr.
Gunpowder." Even on sweltering days, Ayad wraps a scarf around his face
when he leaves home, and most nights he sleeps with sunglasses still on.
But all that may change.
On Friday, Ayad and his father walked into a laser surgery clinic in
Washington to begin a series of treatments to clear his skin.
Ayad curled up on the doctor's chair, eyeing the business end of a
washing machine-sized laser.
"Ma, ma, ma," he wailed.
It was the end of one odyssey, which began in a mud hut in southern
Iraq, and the start of another.
Doctors say a full recovery for Ayad may be a long shot, but at the
urging of a lawyer who read about his plight and labored for more than a
year to bring the boy to America, top dermatologists and cornea surgeons
are willing to try.
What finally got Ayad here was an unlikely alliance between Joe Tom
Easley, a lawyer and well-known gay activist, and Robert Reilly, a
Defense Department adviser reviled in gay circles for an article he once
wrote calling homosexuality "morally disordered."
Mr. Reilly used his influence to get Ayad into the United States, where
the boy joined a small but growing circle of Iraqi children who have
been airlifted to the country for medical help.
"People ask me why this boy, why help him, when there are so many others
worse off," Mr. Easley said in an interview. "I tell them, well, I don't
know about the other boys. But I do know about Ayad."
Ayad and his father, Ali, flew from Amman, Jordan, to New York City on
Wednesday. When Ayad's father took his first look down the canyon of
skyscrapers, he shook his head and laughed, "How did Saddam ever think
he could fight this country?"
It was about a month after the American-led war against Iraq began that
Ayad was injured in his hometown, Kifil, also referred to as Al-Kifl,
about two hours south of Baghdad. The town was heavily attacked with
cluster bombs, which crack open in the sky to sprinkle smaller
"bomblets" over a wide area. Some of them do not detonate immediately,
and each year many civilians, especially children, are maimed after
happening upon them.
Ayad says it was his family's cow that set off the cluster bomb that
injured him, in April 2003.
"Boom," the boy said, as he recalled the incident. "Bomb."
His face swelled to a black crisp, and his family, poor date farmers,
had no means to help him. He eventually healed, but his right eye was
ruined and his forehead and cheeks were tattooed with ugly blue
freckles. His disfigurement led to shame, and his shame kept him out of
school. Seeking help, his father made the rounds of American military
bases, where he crossed paths with a reporter in March 2004 in Baghdad.
A week later, Ayad's picture was on the front page of The New York Times.
Mr. Easley saw it. And so did Tina Alster, a laser dermatologist in
Washington.
"When I saw that picture, I turned to my husband and said, 'I could fix
this guy,' " said Dr. Alster, who would cross paths with Mr. Easley and
Ayad months later.
The first step for Mr. Easley, 64, a former law professor who teaches
bar preparation classes, was to establish contact with someone in Iraq
to help him track down Ayad and his family. He found that contact in
Marla Ruzicka, a young American woman working with civilian casualties
there. But this spring, that link was broken when Ms. Ruzicka and an
Iraqi colleague, Faiz Ali Salim, were killed in a car bombing.
Mr. Easley then turned to American troops based in southern Iraq to
maintain contact.
It took months of work to secure the proper paperwork for Ayad and his
father to travel to the United States, followed by a bureaucratic
blizzard of setbacks, some because the family had used different last
names for Ayad on different documents.
In May a letter arrived from United States immigration officials that
said their application had been denied, without providing a reason.
"One of the things I learned from Marla was never take no," Mr. Easley
said.
So he pressed on. At the bottom of the one-page rejection letter was a
contact name, Robert Reilly, and a telephone number.
Mr. Easley immediately called Mr. Reilly, a senior adviser for
international security affairs in the office of the secretary of defense.
Iraqi Boy's Journey to Erase the Scars of War
With Mr. Reilly's help, Ayad and his father were able to avoid the long
visa application process and were given permission to come to the United
States under a little-known program called significant public benefit
parole, which allows for expedited entry to the United States. The
program has been used to bring foreign witnesses into the country to
testify in trials and in other instances when the government feels it
serves a public interest. When contacted, Mr. Reilly said he was not
authorized to be interviewed for this article. The father and son could
hardly contain themselves when they landed in New York on Wednesday
night.
In Times Square, Ali's eyes lingered on every building, every
storefront, every glowing billboard.
"So much electricity," Ali said.
They quickly figured out what American things they liked (grilled
cheese) and what they did not (escalators).
Over Afghan kebabs on Wednesday night, Mr. Easley shared the plan for
their two-week visit. To restore his full sight, Ayad would undergo a
cornea transplant on his right eye at Johns Hopkins hospital in
Baltimore next week, which doctors agreed to perform free. To help
rebuild his self-esteem, he would have the bomb fragments and the scars
removed from his face with laser treatment at Dr. Alster's clinic, also
at no cost, which would begin Friday. The first step was to treat a few
spots on his right ear and his right hand and then have Ayad return in
10 days for more extensive laser surgery.
Most of the visit's expenses, including hotels and interpreters, have
been covered by donations, except for the airfare, which cost Mr. Easley
around $6,000. On Thursday afternoon, Ayad and his father, along with
Mr. Easley, boarded an Amtrak train in Manhattan bound for Baltimore.
The next day the two joined a stream of well-coifed women heading into
Dr. Alster's clinic - the W Hotel of dermatology, with slim leather
couches, New Age art and a medical staff decked out in black scrubs.
After his father wrestled Ayad's sunglasses off, Dr. Alster began
zapping a few spots on his ear to see how his skin responded.
They had come a long way for this, pain and all.
Ayad looked in the mirror at his ear. It hurt, so he kept rubbing it.
But already the first of the ugly freckles were gone.

--
Garden Shade Zone 5 in a Japanese Jungle manner.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted ((C) ) material the use of
which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to
advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral,
ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this
constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided
for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This
material is distributed without profit.
.