Home > Georgians@War > Archives > 2007 > February
February 2007
Baby Noor in the midst of war
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Louie Favorite
Noor al-Zahra, known to most Atlantans as Baby Noor, is held by her grandmother, Soad, in Baghdad's Green Zone.
Baghdad, Iraq - Inside the medical office of the Iraqi National Assistance Center, the grandmother unravels a school-bus yellow piece of paper containing the results of her granddaughter’s latest medical examination.
A doctor reads the report as the baby, Noor al-Zahra, dressed in a red and beige Barbie outfit, howls.
The smile that captured hearts in Atlanta cannot be coaxed — not even with a fuzzy, pink teddy bear that a soldier drops by.
Baby Noor, as she has become known, is cranky and unwell.
“I don’t know what to do,” her grandmother, Soad, says through a translator. “Noor feels good one week and bad the next.”
Born with a severe spinal cord defect, Noor caught the attention of Georgia Army National Guard soldiers who plucked her from impoverished Abu Ghraib and flew her to Atlanta.
Doctors at Children’s Healthcare gave Noor the treatment the family could not access in Iraq. A tumor-like growth on her back was removed, a shunt placed in her head to prevent fluid buildup.
The Iraqi baby who had little chance at life was miraculously given one. That single act of humanitarianism in the midst of war gained Noor instant celebrity.
Now, more than a year after she was discovered, her life has lost some of its luster. Out of the media spotlight, she is once again just one of thousands of Iraqi children in need of care that’s often difficult to find.
On this day, Dr. Ali (his full name, like that of Noor’s family members, is withheld for security reasons), says Noor has a urinary tract infection that is causing bouts of fever and making her belly swell. Given her circumstances, he urges her grandmother to make an appointment to have a scan done of Noor’s brain. He had asked for the scan on Soad’s previous visit to the center last fall.
Soad explains the wait for an appointment at a public hospital near her home was very long. Baghdad’s widening sectarian divide has limited where she can take Noor for medical care. She tells Dr. Ali she has no money to go to a private clinic.
Soad says the doctors who were asked by her Atlanta sponsors to examine Noor on a regular basis are no longer around. Dr. Ali says many doctors have fled Iraq or resettled in safer areas in the northern part of the country.
He has thought about doing the same but is still here because he works in the relative safety of the heavily fortified area of Baghdad known as the “Green Zone.”
Dr. Ali and his staff coordinate medical care for Iraqi children with foreign humanitarian associations like Childspring International, which sponsored Noor’s trip to Atlanta last year. So far, the Iraqi assistance center has sent 120 children abroad. Some have cleft palates, nervous tissue damage or congenital heart problems. Ali knows Noor was lucky to have come face-to-face with soldiers who were able to rescue her quickly.
“It’s her fate,” he says. But Dr. Ali also knows Noor’s life is a health challenge multiplied manifold in Iraq’s difficult conditions.
As Noor sits in her grandmother’s lap, a woman on the center’s staff compliments Noor’s lacy, white espadrilles. They are a gift from her Atlanta sponsor, Nancy Turner, who has tried to stay in touch with the family. But Noor’s feet don’t move. Nor do her legs. The doctors have told Soad from the beginning that even with the best surgery and care, her granddaughter will probably have to use a wheelchair.
As she gets older, Noor wants to play with other children. But Soad has noticed that Noor now gets agitated when she can’t make move like the other children do.
Soad is weary from carrying Noor —- now almost 18 months old and big for her age. She eats solid food, and is particularly fond of potatoes, rice and stew and, of course, cookies. Soad wants one day to get her a motorized wheelchair.
Again, Dr. Ali presses Soad to have Noor’s brain scanned.
“Noor can live,” he says. “She needs medical consultation. It all depends on the family.”
Noor’s cries echo through the hallways between the metal shipping containers that serve as the assistance center’s offices. Soad collects her things and walks toward a security checkpoint that demarcates the Green Zone from the rest of Baghdad.
Noor’s father, Haider, is waiting on the other side. He was barred from entering because his passport expired and he lacks sufficient identification.
On the way, Soad lets out a torrent of frustration. She says her family has paid a price for their American connections.
She says her shop at Abu Ghraib market was bombed last summer and that the owners of the space hounded her for money.
Her elder son Bashar has been detained by the U.S. military for months. Soad goes to see him periodically but says she does not know the charges against him. Haider was abducted and released twice after the family paid the ransom, she says. They do not know the identity of his kidnappers.
Out of fear, the family left their Abu Ghraib home. Now Haider rarely ventures out. He has no income.
Soad asks if anyone can help Haider and his family emigrate — to Jordan, to the United States. She wants them to live anywhere but here.
Noor plays with a color photograph of her brother Karrar, born in July.
Their mother, Iman, took the healthy baby boy and returned to be with her parents in Abu Ghraib. Soad worries that Noor, who was separated from Iman during her six months in Atlanta, may grow up not knowing her mother.
Soad approaches the heavily guarded checkpoint. She is relieved to give up the weight of the child to Haider.
Noor, who is beginning to talk, can say her father’s name.
As military choppers swarm overhead, Haider covers his daughter’s delicate ears to shield her from the noise. Despite the difficulties, he says, the family will not give up on Noor.
“The terrorists don’t know that I went to America for my baby,” he says.
He marches out of the checkpoint, his mother behind him, his baby in his arms. Noor, oblivious to the uncertainty in this violent city and in her own future, flashes her captivating smile. This time, there is no one to come to the rescue.
Cox Correspondent Larry Kaplow contributed to this story.
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Beauty is found in things that seem ugly
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Victory, Iraq — In this country, one expects certain sounds: thundering explosions, whirling Black Hawks, the rat-a-tat of machine gun fire.
• See photos • Audio: Hear guitarist play
But two other sounds drift from a small, out-of-the-way office. First, there’s the curious, constant grinding noise coming from under the desk of a public affairs officer in the headquarters of an Atlanta-based medical command. Then, there’s the mellifluous melody of a Burmese pop song.
One is an attempt to cleanse ugliness —- the aim of every humanitarian act in Iraq. The other, a representation of the beautiful —- an increasing rarity amid the bloodshed.
Maj. Robert Hart, a schoolteacher from Jacksonville, slides an orange and blue Florida Gators box from underneath his desk. From it, he extracts another box surrounded by Styrofoam peanuts. And inside that? A strange-looking contraption that cleans rocks.
Hart collects the rocks from the vast gravel fields of Camp Victory. The military lays down the stony stuff to reduce dust and mud. The rocks look dull and gray and, truth be told, rather ugly, surrounding the living trailers, dining halls and port-a-johns.
But after 30 days in Hart’s rock tumbler, they emerge as glistening jewels.
In Iraq, people learn to find beauty in things that seem ugly.
“Some of them are absolutely breathtaking,” Hart says, showing off a rust-colored rock with streaks of gold.
He thinks the rocks may have come from the river beds of the Tigris and Euphrates. He hopes to take some of his polished gems home and sell them to raise money for military charities.
Hart and the Fort Gillem-based 3rd Medical Command staff —- many of whom are Atlantans —- are in charge of all military combat hospitals in Iraq. Though the soldiers at the unit’s headquarters have grown used to the drone of the rock machine, it’s not exactly music to their ears. That’s where the second sound comes in.
Hart’s assistant, Sgt. Thawng Lian, hangs his guitar on the wall of the same office. He strums it now and then and sings songs from his homeland, Burma.
Lian immigrated to Atlanta a decade ago and earned a business degree from Georgia Perimeter College. He works as an event tech supervisor at the Renaissance Hotel and joined the Army Reserve in 2001 as a way to give back to the United States.
Here, he slices through the stress of war with music.
“If we love each other, then nobody will have to go to war,” he sings in his native Burmese.
In Iraq, everyone has a way of coping.
For these Atlanta soldiers, two opposing sounds provide solace.
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Emory prof oversees mental health in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — An Emory University assistant professor who works at Grady Memorial Hospital’s drug dependence program has an important role here in Iraq.
Emile Risby, an Army reservist, is serving as the mental health consultant for soldiers in the war zone.
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
| Dr. Emile D. Risby |
Serving with the 3rd Medical Command, based at Fort Gillem, Risby travels across the country to military hospitals to make sure men and women in uniform have access to combat stress counselors.
If a decision needs to be made on whether a soldier should be evacuated out of Iraq for mental health reasons, Risby has the last word.
“We’ve seen more combat stress here because of the nature of the conflict,” said Risby. “The battle zone is everywhere. No one is safe.”
Here, Grady more commonly sees symptoms rather than mental illness.
They are soldiers who are not sick, but show signs of emotional distress: anxiety, depression, loss of focus, irritability.
Risby said many soldiers suffer from painful flashbacks and nightmares. Others cope with feelings of guilt after seeing a buddy die in combat.
Risby firmly believes in his work — and in the troops.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, “at the resiliency of the soldiers.”
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Coffee in a familiar place
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — One of Baghdad’s landmarks is the al-Rasheed Hotel, the tall, drab concrete structure that gained notoriety after the Gulf war.
Saddam Hussein’s government liked to house foreign journalists at the Rasheed, where stories spread quickly that rooms on designated floors came fully equipped with amenities like hidden microphones and video cameras.
In 2002, I hardly slept a wink in my 6th floor room and felt especially uncomfortable in the bathroom. After Saddam’s fall, the commander of a 3rd Infantry Division company that we were covering took me back to the hotel so that I could see it under a new light.
Gone were the strange looking gentlemen who kept vigil in the cavernous lobby. Gone, too was George Bush the first, whose face was tiled into the lobby entrance so that every guest would have to step on it to enter.
Since then, I had not seen the Rasheed’s interior. Until today. A group of journalists went out to have a coffee in the hotel’s refurbished restaurant. I decided to join them. The hotel has a long way to go — Saddam’s touch still lingers in the sparse hallways. Despite the dreariness, a new shop sells carpets and souvenirs.
And the tables at the café were neat and clean. Iraqi men sat at other tables sipping Turkish coffee and smoking their hookahs.
A cup of chai will set you back $2 here, expensive considering the good stuff you can get at Baghdad stalls for a pittance.
But it was a cup of chai at the Rasheed. I never imagined I would be dining there again. Not after the congealed eggs and mushy toast I was served there for breakfast every day.
I sat there thinking. One day, perhaps, the Rasheed will entertain tourists again. One day, as a colleague joked, you’ll be able to book a room here on Expedia.
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Uneasily entering the war zone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kuwait City, Kuwait - It’s not as though I need reminding that I am about to go into the war zone again, but reality begins to set in here on a vast military base in the desert.
Not until now did I feel the familiar softness of sand and the crunch of thick gravel beneath my hiking boots.
Kuwait City’s brightly lit skyline fades here to the drab scenery of tents, Humvees and combat uniforms. Once again, the night is still and dark, save the glow of stars.
This is my sixth trip to Iraq, my fourth as a reporter embedded with the U.S. Army. There’s something to be said for experience - I know now how to navigate through the military side of the Baghdad airport and make my way into the heavily fortified Green Zone, where all journalists must get their credentials.
But the practical knowledge doesn’t ease the anxiety of descending into war. Iraq, after all, is about uncertainty.
It is a land where you think little of the mundane and in moments of silence, you contemplate mortality. You think of all that is precious to you and put things in perspective. And you learn to be patient.
The flight we are booked on has been canceled. We wait all night long for another. It has been 13 hours since we left the comfort of our hotel room and we have so far traveled only a few miles from downtown Kuwait City. The wait is unnerving. It’s that feeling you get when you sit in a dentist’s office, waiting to have a tooth pulled.
Photojournalist Louie Favorite and I board a bus along with two dozen men in uniform. Some are going to Iraq for the first time.
On the radio, a commentator rambles on about the rise of extremist Islam.
We take out our helmets and bulletproof vests from our bags. We have to wear them on the C-130 propeller plane that will take us into the violent Iraqi capitol.
I haven’t worn my gear since last April, when I returned home with a Charlie Company, a Gainesville-based infantry company in the 48th Brigade Combat Team. I spent almost seven months with the 48th, covering Georgia’s citizen soldiers at war.
I am returning now to document another Georgia Army National Guard unit: Company H, 121st Infantry, based at Fort Gillem. Company H has been waging its war in Tal Afar, in northern Iraq, since it arrived in the country last August.
With dawn approaching, the plane takes off, heading north into unfriendly skies.
“It’s 3:30 in the morning. Do you know where your children are,” jokes one soldier. The ups and downs of the C-130 add to the knots already in our stomachs.
And then, with a thud, we arrive. I am back in the land between the two rivers, called so for the Tigris and Euphrates. And with that thud, the anticipation turns to a strange sort of excitement: the thrill of being back in a country I have observed since 2002 mixed with the fear of lurking danger.
I have watched Iraq go through seismic changes. Along the way, I met so many Iraqis and later, soldiers who came to fight America’s war. Iraq stirs memories. Love and hatred. Smiles and tears. Beauty and wretchedness. I hope on this trip, I will return home with many more.
—30—
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Trip home starts in Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kenneth Hutnick knows the only route back home to Alpharetta is the one that takes him away.
He steps aboard the MARTA rail car at North Springs station, and the train hurtles south. Away from his wife, Suzanne. Away from his three daughters, Katie, Erin and Ashlyn, just 27 days old. He held the baby in his arms at the breakfast table until it was time to go.
Earlier this month, MARTA had delivered Hutnick to his cherished family. Then, he was a soldier returning from the battleground of Iraq to warm embraces and the joy of a newborn.
“It’s the kind of stuff movies are made of, almost,” he says, reflecting on his homecoming.
But time whizzed by faster than any train.
Now Hutnick is going back to war, exchanging the softness of three little girls for a company of 160 men, roughened on the edges from time in the infantry. It’s his second time in Iraq with the Georgia Army National Guard.
The train takes him farther and farther from the loved ones he won’t see again until August or perhaps September. In his head, the 42-year-old company commander already has started the six months remaining in battle.
“It begins with the journey back,” he says. “You can’t come home until you’ve left.”
Call it soldier discipline. Hutnick is adept at compartmentalizing his emotions. “Part of it is that if you linger on it, it hurts,” he says about leaving home. “So I try not to linger on it. Maybe it’s unhealthy.”
He laughs at his psychological evaluation of himself.
On this late February day, dancing daffodils and budding trees offer glimpses of the spring that lies ahead. In Tal Afar, a northern Iraqi town not far from the Syrian border, where Company H, 121st Infantry is based, Hutnick will see a different spring. The rain will dissipate and the searing heat of the desert will roll in. No dogwoods or azaleas will color Hutnick’s vista.
The MARTA stops pass by quickly. It’s almost 11 a.m.
At the Lindbergh Station, a soldier dressed in full combat uniform steps aboard the train.
The officer in Hutnick can’t help himself. He inspects the young enlisted man. He shouldn’t have his shades on inside, Hutnick notes. And he’s not wearing his rank on his patrol cap.
Hutnick has been away from his own soldiers almost a month. He is eager to get back to them. He is anxious: His company might be relocated elsewhere in Iraq.
Life has been good at Sykes, the forward operating base in Tal Afar. Hutnick has not lost any soldiers in combat. What will the next six months hold?
He reads the names of the passing MARTA stations.
Midtown.
North Avenue.
The stops are familiar from his days as a young financial analyst who commuted downtown. As the train pauses at Peachtree Center, he remembers a youthful escapade.
A track star in high school and always one for physical fitness, Hutnick once ran all the way up the steep down escalator at Peachtree Center. He doubts he is fit enough to do that now.
Like a lot of soldiers, Hutnick is a history buff. He especially likes to read books about war. One of his inspirations is Maj. Dick Winters, the leader of Easy Company immortalized in the World War II book “Band of Brothers,” and later in a television miniseries.
Hutnick aspires to be “that kind of leader.” He joined the Army straight out of high school and, after a hiatus, settled on a career in the National Guard.
The train snakes its way through south Atlanta. Hutnick stares at the signs and billboards that flash by in a blur.
West End.
Oakland City.
He says “Fort McPherson” out loud and wonders what will become of the base when it is shuttered in the near future.
Three more stops.
As the train arrives at the airport, Hutnick gathers his olive green duffle bag and backpack. He steps onto the platform in front of little girls carrying winter parkas and rolling pink bags on wheels. The last time he went on vacation with his girls was last summer, to Disney World. He promised Katie he would take her there again when he returns from Iraq.
For the 5-year-old and the rest of his family, that day is the focus — the day a father, husband and son comes home. It is the subtext of all farewells.
Hutnick’s father, who did two tours with the Air Force in Vietnam, had driven his son to the North Springs MARTA station. They exchanged military banter during the short drive down Ga. 400, then hugged goodbye.
“I love you, Dad.”
As Hutnick turned to walk toward the turnstiles, his father called out: “If you’re going to be like Dick Winters, remember: He came back.”
As morning turns to afternoon, the Army captain makes his way through airport security, to the international terminal.
His journey away from home is just hours old. But it is the beginning of coming back.
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For Daddy’s girl, questions about time — and trust
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Katie Hutnick understands the passage of time the way most children do: how-long-until.
How long until we eat?
How long until we get there?
How long until I go to kindergarten?
This morning the question is: How long until Daddy gets back from Iraq for good? The short answer is six months.
Even at 5 years old, Katie senses that is not the only answer. There’s another possibility, one that no one in her Alpharetta home wants to think about for long.
For two weeks and three days, Katie has had a taste of what it will be like if the short answer proves true. Her father has been home on leave from duty as commander of Company H, 121st Infantry of the Georgia Army National Guard.
Over there he is Capt. Kenneth Hutnick. Here, he is Daddy.
She has spelled out that name for him with stickers of red and yellow on the back of a kitchen chair. Though he timed his return home to see Katie’s newborn sister Ashlyn, for Katie his visit has been a nonstop party. One day Chuck E. Cheese, the next Monkey Joe’s, the next weaving and bobbing through the wooded backyard, pretending to be dinosaurs and ghosts. He even sat through a Barbie movie.
Now, in the final moments before he leaves to return to Iraq, Katie does not want him out of her sight.
He sits at the breakfast table holding Ashlyn, swaddled in pink fleece. “Daddy, I don’t want you to go,” Katie says.
“I know, but it’s only for six more months, and then it’ll be your birthday. And where are we going?”
“Disney World!”
She plants a kiss on his cheek and wedges herself onto his lap. Her legs, in rainbow-striped tights, dangle over the knee of his camouflage uniform.
***
This is Hutnick’s second deployment to Iraq. The first time, at the start of the war, Katie was too young to grasp what was going on.
Now she’s like a sponge. So Hutnick doesn’t talk about what he does in front of the kids. He and his wife, Suzanne, couch it in terms of going to work rather than going to war.
Most people come home from work every day safely.
The kitchen still smells of toasted English muffins and coffee when Katie makes her announcement.
“OK, everybody, it’s time to say goodbye to Daddy.”
Katie’s grandfather steps outside to warm up the car. He has driven up from Byron to take his son to the MARTA station. Katie will stay behind with her mother, sisters and their part-time nanny. The hugs and kisses begin, but Katie’s goodbye will not be simple.
“Can you throw me in the air one last time before you leave, Daddy? As high as you possibly can, Daddy, as high as you can.”
The hem of her petal-pink dress flutters in the air as he throws her higher and higher, seemingly as high as the bare treetops outside the family room windows. On each ascent, Katie squeezes her eyes shut.
The look on her face says she’s certain that her father’s hands will not let her fall.
***
By the time Ken Hutnick boards the train to the airport, Katie has performed a puppet show in the downstairs playroom, taken a bow and found a clear spot on the toy-strewn floor. She props her diary in her lap.
“Mommy, where’s Daddy?”
“Daddy went back to work.”
“OK.”
Katie pops the cap off a yellow marker and writes in wiggly lines that seem to her the way grown-ups do. She reads aloud:
“Today Daddy went back to Iraq. I’m very happy he did not get killed in the war and that he had a safe journey back here to see us. We had a good time. I love Daddy. He’s the bravest ever. P.S. I hope he comes back safely.”
Her mother smiles, but Suzanne’s eyes are full of surprise, if not alarm. Where has her child heard that? “Yes, that’s a good thing to hope for. Let’s pray for it every night,” Suzanne tells her.
Katie puts the diary down and jumps up to play with her 2-year-old sister, Erin.
Suzanne remains on the floor, her eyes fixed on the pages of yellow squiggles.
***
Later, Suzanne is nursing Ashlyn in the family room. Katie arrives with a sheet of Hello Kitty stickers which she proceeds to put on Erin and her mother. She also has more questions.
She pries herself a spot between the soft arm of the couch and the warmth of her mother. The pink watch on Katie’s wrist measures minutes and hours, not months.
“Mommy, how long is six months?”
“Well, six months is a long time. It’ll be summer, and we’ll almost be ready for school. But Daddy will be able to take you to the bus stop.”
“Yeah, I won’t be in pre-k then.”
“That’s right, you’ll be in kindergarten.”
“I wish it was one week. I wish it was one day.”
“Me, too. You know Daddy’s gonna be all right and OK, and he’s gonna come back?”
“I don’t know he’s gonna be OK.”
“Yes, he will. He’ll be OK, and he’ll come back.”
Katie stares at a Baby Einstein video on television.
A juvenile version of a Mozart concerto fills the room.
***
By midafternoon Katie isn’t feeling well. She has a fever, and she’s throwing up. Stomach virus, her mother figures. Suzanne builds a fire in the fireplace to help soothe her, while Katie lies on the couch. A “Curious George” video keeps her entertained.
Erin and Ashlyn are down for naps. In the relative quiet of this February day, their mother goes through the family budget to see how much longer she can keep the nanny. Another mom at Katie’s preschool helped raise money to hire the extra hands.
Three kids under the age of 6 are quite a lot to handle, particularly when the family disciplinarian is overseas.
Soon the phone rings.
It’s Ken. He’s at the Atlanta airport waiting for his flight to a destination he cannot share.
Suzanne tells him about Katie’s illness. She passes her the phone. In the best I’m-really-really-sick voice she can muster, she tells her father about her tummy ache, blow by blow. She also tells him she loves him.
“OK, I’ll call you back when I’m feeling better, Daddy.”
She trusts that even in Iraq, he will answer if she calls.
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