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DEL.ICIO.USNoor’s odyssey full of promise and peril
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Host mom Nancy and Noor partake in their daily ritual of "girl talk" in front of a mirror. • Photos
Only the women were home when Charlie Company soldiers began to search the house in Abu Ghraib, a town just west of Baghdad where gunfire and bombs are commonplace. The family matriarch, Soad, answered their questions.
Do you know anyone involved in insurgent activity? Are you aware of any criminals in the area? Have you ever been coerced by anyone?
The infantrymen were on routine patrol that December day, the kind they had conducted since arriving in Iraq seven months earlier. Yet the random nature of Iraq’s war meant even the routine could go badly awry.
The soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team listened as an interpreter translated Soad’s answers. In Abu Ghraib, home to the notorious prison, years of Saddam Hussein’s ironfisted rule and months of the insurgency had taken its toll.
Suspicion filled the room.
This was not Soad’s first encounter with Americans. She’d seen a neighbor struck by a bullet meant for suspected insurgents. She’d watched an American tank run over a kiosk that soldiers had built for her and neighbors to use as a market.
And her eldest son, Bashar, had twice been detained by U.S. soldiers — first for a day or so on suspicion of firing a rocket-propelled grenade, and then again, just days before Charlie Company knocked on her door. She asked the Georgians to help her find him.
As the Gainesville-based soldiers turned to go, Soad made a bold request.
In the dimly lit family room, she showed Sgt. Nicholas Jelks her grandchild, Noor al-Zahra, a baby with big brown eyes who was not yet 3 months old. Soad turned the baby over to reveal a tumor-like growth covering her back.
Why don’t you do something about her instead of bothering the innocent? Soad asked.
Jelks turned to Pfc. Justin Donnelly, a teenage medic known as “Doc” who carried a digital camera on every patrol.
With a few clicks of the camera, counterinsurgency gave way to compassion. An ordinary mission three weeks before Christmas set off a chain of events that would capture hearts around the world.
The soldiers learned the Iraqi infant had spina bifida, a birth defect that would kill her if left untreated. Their effort to save Baby Noor, as she would come to be known, was a heartwarming tale of American generosity. It seemed like an unequivocal victory plucked from the chaos of combat.
Yet, doubt lurked — on both sides. In a country of bloodshed and pervasive fear, even the noblest of deeds don’t always meet with happy endings.
The soldiers’ chance encounter set an ordinary Iraqi family on a tumultuous journey to Atlanta that made news around the world, from CNN to Iraqi TV. No one could know what would happen after the media spotlight faded.
The soldiers saved a baby’s life. Yet their humanitarian mission also unleashed forces that would endanger her family — and lead to yet another bombing near Baghdad.
Compelled to help
In Iraq, trust is a word fading from the average vocabulary.
“One day they could be your friend; the next day they wanted to kill you,” said Sgt. 1st Class Michael Sonen, who led many of Charlie Company’s civil affairs missions, about the residents in Abu Ghraib.
Still, soldiers listened as Soad told them that Iraqi doctors called Noor “lame” and a “reject,” a baby who probably would live only 40 more days. This was a traditional society in the developing world that often views children with handicaps, especially girls, as liabilities.
Charlie Company soldiers returned to Baghdad’s Camp Liberty with photographs of the baby. First Lt. Jeff Morgan persuaded Army doctor Maj. Susan Robinson to visit the house and examine Noor.
“My reaction was, ‘This kid’s going to die unless we do something,’ ” Morgan said. “I’ve got five kids. No way I can imagine having medical care out there for my kids and not be able to access it.”
As a soldier and a “Christian in the combat zone,” Morgan said he felt compelled to do what he thought was right by helping Noor. Now, six months later, given repercussions Noor’s family has faced, it seems less clear-cut.
“There was never really any discussion about what would happen after Noor got treatment,” Morgan said. “Maybe it was right. Maybe it was wrong.”
Tensions mount in Iraq
Noor’s mother, Iman, was only 19, and the family thought Soad would be more capable of handling a trip to America. Soad said she could not travel unaccompanied by a male relative and decided her son, Noor’s father, Haider, also should go.
In late December, Charlie Company commander Capt. Anthony Fournier sent soldiers to fetch Noor and her guardians and bring them back to the base near Baghdad’s airport.
Fournier said that saving Baby Noor gave a tangible sense of success to soldiers who sometimes felt they were fighting without purpose. Even so, suspicion lingered.
A soldier guarding Noor’s trailer leapt from his chair when Haider emerged with a cellphone one day. Insurgents often use mobile phones to detonate makeshift bombs, the top killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.
Back in Abu Ghraib, the family worried, too. Neighbors warned that insurgents might target the family if it accepted help from the Americans. Soad’s husband and other relatives tried to dissuade her from taking Noor to Atlanta. The family also worried about lacking the means to provide for the lifetime of medical care Noor would need. Army doctors predicted that even with surgery, Noor would not gain the use of her legs. Noor’s home sits on a corner of two unpaved roads strewn with trash and stained with sewage the color of anti-freeze — not the best place for a child in a wheelchair.
Sending Noor to America, though, meant choosing life over death.
“I had hope there was a future for her,” Soad said.
A few days before leaving, she had second thoughts. She told a soldier that she worried about Haider’s safety in the United States. Maybe she and Haider would run into an American whose relative had been killed in Iraq. Maybe that American would seek revenge by killing her son.
You’re going to be pleasantly surprised, the soldier said.
Arrival in Atlanta
The media followed Noor in Baghdad and awaited her at the Atlanta airport.
Reporters scribbled notes. Camera flashes fired. Spectators clapped for Soad and Haider, their faces obscured by scarves and dark glasses.
Dr. Roger Hudgins, chief of neurosurgery at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, pledged to donate his services by operating on Noor.
“Obviously good works happen every day in Iraq, and good works happen with the soldiers,” he said. “We hear all of the negative. It’s about time, I think, that we have the opportunity to hear some of the good.”
The celebrity baby’s story emphasized U.S. contributions in Iraq at a time of sagging popularity for the war at home.
Sponsored by Childspring International, a Christian nonprofit group that brings sick children to Atlanta for medical care they cannot get in their native countries, Noor was examined at Children’s Healthcare, a state-of-the-art hospital that treats cancer, blood disorders and orthopedic problems.
The hospital contrasted sharply with clinics in Abu Ghraib. One near Noor’s house had filthy terrazzo floors, shattered windows and just three shelves of medicine from the black market or U.S. military.
Now Noor was receiving care in one of the world’s most medically advanced countries. Kevin McClelland, spokesman for Children’s Healthcare, estimated that Noor received $85,000 in hospital services during her stay in Atlanta. He said that does not include doctors’ fees or support services such as social workers or interpreters.
On Jan. 9, an hour after doctors performed the first of several operations, Hudgins entered Room 137 to tell Noor’s grandmother and father that all went well.
“From her first days,” Soad said. “Noor has been very strong.”
“She is very strong because her family is very strong,” Hudgins said.
Soad asked Hudgins if Noor would ever walk. The surgeon paused. He previously had told Noor’s family that the baby would grow up in a wheelchair, as a paraplegic for life, but they yearned for a miracle.
“I’m not here to take away hope,” Hudgins said, “but time will tell.”
Modern-day marvels
Doctors wanted Noor to remain in Atlanta until she was medically fit to go home.
Soad, Haider and Noor settled into a routine with two host families that Childspring arranged. The families opened suburban homes, took their visitors to the Varsity restaurant and Georgia Aquarium and accompanied Noor and her relatives to medical appointments.
At a Kroger in Alpharetta, Soad and Haider marveled at small jets spraying a light mist onto bok choy and savoy cabbage. It was much different from the family’s consignment shop in Abu Ghraib’s market, where flies descend on open bowls of olives and freshly slaughtered chickens and sheep.
Haider stretched his arms to show that their store was smaller than a stainless steel compartment Kroger stocked with soy milk and organic yogurt.
Between doctor appointments, Noor and her family spent long hours in the home of Nancy and Edward Turner, who assumed host-family duties in the second month of their stay. Soad and Haider doted on Noor and listened to Arabic music while the Turners were at work. Haider marveled at a central vacuum system, sipped strong chai tea and played dominoes with Edward. Some evenings, Soad cooked lamb and rice. Nancy showed her how to use a treadmill. She dyed Soad’s hair with burgundy Revlon coloring that Soad had chosen.
Trips to the hospital brought good news. Doctors were pleased with Noor’s progress.
Yet Soad was anxious on the phone to Iraq. Sometimes, the tears flowed.
She missed her husband and the shop. She missed the birth of another grandchild. She had been in charge of her family of six girls and three boys. Without her, decisions were often difficult. She said she was willing to stay until doctors told her Noor was well enough to go home.
Then the phone rang one night in March. There was trouble in Abu Ghraib.
Danger on the homefront
Soad gave this account of what her son Bashar told her in that call:
Someone had blown up the family’s store. The bombers left a note criticizing the family for helping Americans. The note asserted that Soad and Haider did not really go to the United States to seek medical care for Noor. It also said Bashar had not been detained by U.S. soldiers but had been working secretly with them.
The attackers threatened to blow up the family home unless Soad and Haider came back.
The U.S. Army says it’s difficult to confirm Soad’s account because it handed over control of that area of Abu Ghraib to the Iraqi army in January. But Soad said the call prompted her to make a wrenching decision.
She and Haider would go home and leave Noor with Nancy and Edward, at least until doctors said it was safe for the baby to travel.
In late March, Soad and Haider boarded a plane with help from Childspring, an agency with four employees that had never handled a high-profile case involving threats of retaliation.
“I couldn’t take Noor back without finishing her care,” Soad said later from Iraq. “I couldn’t lose my family either.”
Soad and Haider avoided their house in Abu Ghraib, staying at first with relatives in a safer neighborhood. Worried that insurgents would strike, Haider went into hiding. Soad struggled to find money.
Childspring sent her home with $10,000. Without an income, Soad said she has been using that money to pay for living expenses and repay people to whom she owed money for items on consignment at her store. She said she needs at least $30,000 more to get her family’s life back in order: $10,000 to rebuild the store and $20,000 to restock the inventory and repay her debts.
“This definitely has something to do with our association with the Americans,” she said about her perils in a phone interview last month. “Everyone here knows who we are.”
When Soad and Bashar returned to Abu Ghraib one day to collect belongings, men in Iraqi army uniforms showed up and accused Bashar of cooperating with insurgents.
Soad knew insurgents and sectarian militias often kidnap people by posing as soldiers. Many people whisked off that way turn up dead, signs of torture on their bodies. Yet people like Bashar have few good choices. It is hard to say no to men with guns.
The men in military uniforms put Bashar and a brother-in-law into a truck. They drove off.
A family divided
Soad lost track of her eldest son but eventually heard about an Iraqi army unit with a record of him in detention. Haider remains in hiding.
“It’s difficult for me to be optimistic,” Soad said.
Lt. Col. Kevin Brown, commander of a 10th Mountain Division unit to which Charlie Company had been attached, said in an e-mail last week that he could not confirm Noor’s family had been targeted, but that they had been “clearly threatened … for the medical assistance provided for their child.”
He said the family has never expressed views that are hostile to or in favor of U.S. forces.
“The only association they have had is in doing what any parent would do and that is seek out the best medical assistance possible for their child,” Brown said.
Brown said the Iraqi army and fledgling police can provide “adequate/effective security to the family.”
Meanwhile, Noor has grown into a smiling 9-month-old baby who loves baths and sleeps through the night.
Several days ago, after doctors gave her a clean bill of health, Childspring sent Noor home with the help of lawmakers in Washington and the U.S. military. This time, because of security concerns, no cameras greeted her at airports.
Donnelly, the medic who first photographed Noor, was among the soldiers who took the baby back to her home Wednesday.
An uncertain future
Childspring has discussed Noor’s condition with a team of doctors in Baghdad — a neurologist, a urologist, a pediatrician and an orthopedist. The group sent Noor home with catheters and shunts like the one placed in her brain to drain fluids. As she grows, she probably will require surgery again.
Soad knows her granddaughter, saddled with a lifetime of visits to doctors, probably never will have access to the kind of medical care she received in Atlanta. Robinson, the Army doctor who examined Noor in December, said she believed Soad “would go the extra mile” for Noor’s follow-up care.
“A lot of her quality of life will depend on how motivated her family is,” Robinson said in a recent e-mail from Baghdad. “They described taking her to several places to get a diagnosis and were willing to take her to the United States.
“A normal life in Iraq is certainly different from a normal life in the U.S.,” she said. “We have witnessed many people in Iraq with disabilities, and they seem to carry on with what they consider to be normal.”
For their efforts to save Noor, Charlie Company soldiers recently received two humanitarian awards — from the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust and the Anne Frank Center in New York. A few days ago, the Spina Bifida Association paid them tribute.
As the soldiers accept accolades, Noor’s family braces for an uncertain future.
Soad said she believes she did the right thing by taking her granddaughter to America. She dreams about visiting again the nation that saved Iraq from Saddam Hussein, the country of medical miracles, where anything is possible, but she can’t bear to leave her beloved homeland behind forever.
Soad worries about Noor and about her family’s fate.
She worries about Iraq. She wonders how it will all turn out.
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Comments
By doinou
July 2, 2006 08:00 AM | Link to this
Charity begins at home.
By Charlie company soldier
July 3, 2006 08:59 AM | Link to this
No, charity starts where you live. We lived in Iraq.
By Christina
July 3, 2006 01:03 PM | Link to this
I believe that “goodwill” deserves to be bestowed among all people as a measure of compassion. But I also believe that there are enough unfortunate people here in the U.S. that deserve to be helped also.
It seems that “We” as Americans are always quick to overlook the unfortunate people who live right around us and go out of our way to help everyone else in every other country.
Help those at home first, and then go out and cure the evils of the world!
By My Opinion
July 3, 2006 02:53 PM | Link to this
I am glad that Noor was able to come to Atlanta and be given a chance to live. I, too, believe that our own should be cared for in the same manner. Does anyone have data about the number of American children who have received similar care without charge or the number that have been left to die because they were refused the care? Surely there have been some cases where compassionate doctors have stepped up and helped those who cannot help themselves. However, corporate America is after the almighty dollar and the insurance industry in this country makes it hard for many Americans. Some cannot afford it at all. Yes, we need to take care of each other but we also need to take care of those who have so much less than we Americans have.
God bless those great 48th Brigade Warriors who acted out of compassion for an infant who had received a death sentence in her homeland and acted in a benevolent way to help her have a chance to live. And bless those medical professionals who gave of their time and talent and the hosts families who gave of themselves. You are all heroes in your own way. Way to go Charlie Company. Thanks to all the 48th for your service. God please care for those of the 48th who are still in Iraq.
God bless all of our military wherever they may be and bring the home safely.
By Jeannie
July 3, 2006 03:00 PM | Link to this
It is not this childs fault.. Yes, we should look at where we live too, but these guys/ gals were not here at the time. They were in Iraq, doing a job. They didn’t see an evil child or a family that was shooting at them.. They sow a child in dieing need of help. I don’t think anyone would or could turn their back to that..If they could, then I don’t think you could call yourself human..
By bubba9
July 4, 2006 02:41 AM | Link to this
I am proud of the 48th and the job they did, especially helping baby Noor, and the other good deeds you did.
GOD’s spirit dewells in you all.
By Momma Kat Orr
July 8, 2006 11:46 AM | Link to this
Good job,48th. Y’all rock - we are so proud of you!
Yikes
By Good E-mail Message
July 8, 2006 07:00 PM | Link to this
Subject: Two forces
Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ and the American G. I.
One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.
Thank them both.