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Thursday, December 29, 2005
Iraqi baby’s new name: Georgia
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — The first time Georgia soldiers entered her house, Soad was scared. Americans had detained her eldest son for questioning once. She didn’t like gun-toting men in camouflage uniforms poking around the family home in Abu Ghraib.
But out of that frightening moment came a gift of joy.
Gainesville-based soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team promised to help give new life to Soad’s granddaughter Noor al-Zahra, born three months ago with a severe spinal cord defect that was untreatable in Iraq.
“I am so thankful for everything,” Soad said. “We will call the baby Noor al-Zahra Georgia.”
“Georgia! Georgia!” she told her daughters when she called home from Baghdad’s Camp Liberty on Thursday. “We want to name her that because the people of Georgia are helping us,” Soad said. “It will be a nice name for her.”
Just hours before an anticipated departure from Iraq, Soad sat in an Army trailer sorting out a host of emotions racing through her heart.
She had never left her family behind or flown on a plane before; the only times she had left Iraq was by car to neighboring Syria and Iran.
Now she was about to travel halfway around the world with a sick child in her arms. She had surrendered her granddaughter’s future to people she didn’t know in a foreign and faraway land.
“I am amazed by the generosity of the Americans,” Soad said through an interpreter. “They came to my house so many times. They paid for everything.”
Soad, 45, said she never dreamed that one day she would see the United States. She was excited, even though her trip was under such stressful circumstances. She knew that even with the best medical care, there were no guarantees for Noor.
Military doctors who have examined Noor said she would probably be left with paralysis in both legs. No one knows with certainty whether potential fluid buildup has caused any significant brain damage.
Soad knew, too, that she was putting her family at risk by accepting American help — insurgents often target Iraqi citizens who are seen as cooperating with U.S. soldiers.
But she said she had to take the chance and accept the soldiers’ offer to fly Noor to Atlanta. She could not live with herself knowing that she had not done everything she could to give her granddaughter the possibility of a productive life.
The full names of Noor’s family members have been withheld because of security reasons. Soad said she told friends and family that she was going to Georgia, not to America.
“It can be dangerous for us to be associated with America,” she said, fixing the tan, crocheted scarf around her head.
Noor, nicknamed “Baby Nora” by the soldiers, was born with spina bifida. Her spinal cord had not fully closed during her mother, Iman’s, pregnancy, leaving a tumorlike growth on her tiny back.
Iraqi doctors told the family that they lacked the facilities to treat the baby and that she would not survive long.
Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment’s Charlie Company discovered the little girl during a search of the family’s house. They were determined to save her.
Noor’s father, Haider, 23, cradled the frail baby in his arms, thankful that the medical treatment she desperately needed was finally within reach. He’d spent a good chunk of the afternoon getting Noor’s name added to his passport.
He poured hot tea for his mother and the interpreter and occasionally stuck his head out the door to smoke a cigarette. He said he had seen America in magazines and movies. He, like his mother, was incredulous that he would soon be there himself.
Capt. Anthony Fournier, 38, commander of Charlie Company, was optimistic that, after weeks of negotiations and efforts to expedite travel arrangements, Noor and her guardians would arrive in Atlanta on Saturday afternoon.
Late Thursday night, Fournier, a schoolteacher from Augusta, drove to central Baghdad’s heavily fortified International Zone and collected the visas that would enable the family to enter the United States.
Soad, Haider and the baby are expected to leave Baghdad today for Kuwait, from where they will board a commercial jet that will fly them to Atlanta.
Childspring International, an Atlanta-based charity that matches sick children from the developing world with U.S. hospitals, has made arrangements for Noor and her family to stay with an Arabic-speaking host family. Children’s Healthcare has offered to perform surgery to correct Noor’s spinal cord at no cost.
The traditional Muslim family decided Noor’s mother, who is only 18, was too young and should not be traveling out of the country. “Iman has been crying a lot,” Soad said about her daughter-in-law. “She misses her baby but is happy that she is getting help. She is very young. She doesn’t leave the home.”
Soad fired off a dozen questions about Georgia. “Where will we stay in America?” she asked. “How will I let my family know we are safe? How tall are the buildings there? What is the weather like?”
She worried about leaving behind the small shop she runs with her sons at Abu Ghraib market. She worried, too, about one of her daughters, Niran, 24, who is eight months pregnant.
“I didn’t have time to make any preparations for her,” Soad said. Charlie Company soldiers traveled to Soad’s house Tuesday night to fetch her, Haider and Noor. The family was given minutes to pack their belongings for the long journey ahead. Since then, the three have been housed in a trailer behind Charlie Company’s headquarters at Camp Liberty.
Soldiers have been stopping by to make sure the family has everything it needs.
Thursday evening, Staff Sgt. David Squires wished the family a safe trip. “I hated that it took so long to get administrative and logistical things taken care of,” said Squires, 47, who works for a hearing aid company in Gainesville. “We’re all hoping for the best possible outcome for this baby. It’s our little project here. It’s our mark on this country.”
Soad sipped her tea and tried to placate her sobbing granddaughter.
She held up a small stuffed animal, tickling Noor’s cheeks.
“Georgia,” she said. “Look here, Georgia.”
The baby stopped crying. She looked into her grandmother’s eyes — and smiled.
Hoping for an ace of a new year
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The soldiers of the 48th Brigade offer their resolutions for the new year, including one from a real card. • PHOTOS, RESOLUTIONS
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Infant ruled fit to fly to U.S.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
"It just makes you feel good inside knowing you're doing something for a sick child," says Staff Sgt. Darryl Clark, feeding Noor. • MORE PHOTOS
Baghdad, Iraq — It was a sound not heard before around the Georgia soldiers’ trailers at Camp Liberty: the frantic cries of a hungry baby.
Staff Sgt. Darryl Clark, 40, picked up the tiny girl, Noor al-Zahra, and put the small plastic bottle filled with baby formula into her mouth, gently rocking her frail body in his arms. Within minutes, the baby had fallen sleep.
“That’s just good stuff,” said Clark, a soldier in the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. “It just makes you feel good inside knowing you’re doing something for a sick child of that age.
“It got me all teary-eyed,” Clark said later about the baby that soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment’s Charlie Company are trying to send to the United States so she can receive the medical care she needs to correct a life-threatening spinal cord defect.
“If I hadn’t gotten out of there when I did, I would’ve been crying my head off,” said Clark, a full-time Guard soldier who has six children.
Charlie Company soldiers fetched Noor, her father, Haider, and grandmother, Soad, from the family home in impoverished Abu Ghraib on Tuesday night and brought them back to Baghdad’s Camp Liberty.
After an hourlong examination Wednesday morning, two Army doctors declared Noor, born in September with a severe form of spina bifida, medically fit to fly to Atlanta, where several organizations and hospitals have volunteered services to care for the baby and her guardians.
Noor requires surgery to repair her spinal cord, which did not fully close during her mother’s pregnancy.
If everything works out, the baby could arrive in Atlanta as early as New Year’s Day.
Normally, conversation in Charlie Company’s command post centers on battle space and insurgent activity in the treacherous neighborhoods of eastern Abu Ghraib. Wednesday, the discussion among the machine gun-toting soldiers was far more challenging: where to buy diapers and baby formula.
At times, Charlie Company’s office felt more like a travel agency than a military operations center. Company commander Capt. Anthony Fournier spent a good chunk of his day negotiating necessary paperwork and making travel arrangements. He said the family would fly on a military plane to Kuwait, where they will board a commercial flight to Atlanta via Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Well into the night, Fournier was still on the phone with Army officials and Atlantans who are involved in the case.
“I don’t think this is a diversion from our fight over here,” said Fournier, a schoolteacher from Augusta. “It’s a big part of the fight.
“The terrorists’ strategy is to do bad things and blame it on the Americans. This goes directly against that: offering peace and freedom against the terrorists’ death and destruction,” he said of the efforts to save “Baby Nora,” the nickname soldiers have given little Noor.
Childspring International, an Atlanta-based charity that links sick children from the developing world to hospitals in America, is sponsoring the family for the visas. A doctor at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has agreed to perform Noor’s surgery at no cost.
Childspring’s development director, Helen Shepard, said her agency typically does not support male family members because they are considered a greater immigration risk.
But Shepard said her group would take responsibility for Noor’s father if the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad grants him a visa.
Fournier said the U.S. Embassy has agreed to expedite visas for the family.
Noor’s grandmother, the matriarch of the family, said Wednesday that she would not travel without her son by her side. It is uncommon for a traditional Muslim woman such as Soad to travel unaccompanied by a male relative.
Lacking the resources to treat her in Iraq, doctors here told the family that Noor would not live past 45 days. The gap in her spinal cord left her susceptible to infection and fluid buildup in her brain.
But Noor was almost 3 months old when Charlie Company soldiers discovered her during a house-to-house search for suspected insurgents in mid-December.
“One of the women in that house mentioned to me there was a sick baby,” said Pfc. Justin Donnelly, a 19-year-old Charlie Company medic from Owego, N.Y. The family showed Donnelly the tumor-like growth on the baby’s back.
“I brought a photo back. That started the whole ball running pretty much,” Donnelly said as he walked over to the baby’s trailer with a fresh supply of baby formula purchased at a local market. “To be honest, I didn’t think we’d be able to do anything to help her just because of the situation here right now.”
Capt. Keith Compton, a pediatrician with the 10th Mountain Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, said Noor looked healthy other than her spinal cord defect. So far, he said, there were no signs of fluid buildup in Noor’s brain.
But Compton said Noor most likely would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. The baby did not respond to touch on her legs and feet.
“I wouldn’t say she will be a normal child walking around, but she’ll have a chance at a functional life,” Compton said.
Even though Iraqi doctors were unable to perform the surgery Noor needed, Compton felt confident that medical facilities in the Baghdad area would be able to support Noor after her return from the United States.
“I’m pretty excited about this,” Donnelly said. “I’m doing a job I feel like I was put here to do.”
Staff photographer Curtis Compton (ccompton@ajc.com) contributed to this article.
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