Category — Case Profiles

Buthaina in Amman, Summer 2007

When Cindy Sheehan (co-founder of the antiwar group Gold Star Families for Peace and mother of slain US soldier Casey Sheehan, for whom “Camp Casey” in Crawford, Texas, was named) visited Buthaina with DAI team members last summer, she wrote an appeal for funds that was able to help significantly with meeting Buthaina’s needs. After months in Amman, Buthaina had improved enough to be able to recently return to Iraq - a good thing, because funds her family had raised for her care had also been exhausted.

Our friend Buthaina continues to need our help, as her journey of healing continues.

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Four-and-a-half-year-old Mina’s mother took a medicine called Tinifar - which is now known to cause birth defects - during her first two weeks of pregnancy in early 2003. When the war started in March, there were many explosions in her area and she lost touch with her husband, who was in Baghdad, for 20 days. The trauma of the war and the uncertainty of her husband’s fate made her pregnancy very difficult, but only when Mina was born in October with an opening at the back of her head and abnormal growths in her eyes and ears did the extent of the problem become apparent.

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Just before 8 in the morning in early December 2007, 18-year-old Saba was riding in the bus she and her friends used to get to college in Baghdad when a young man boarded and asked to be taken to a different university. When the driver refused, the young man insisted and then pulled out a pistol and shot the driver numerous times, killing him. The man then turned to Saba and shot her as well. The bullet entered her left shoulder and exited from her back, after breaking several vertebrae and damaging her spinal cord.

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In the summer of 2006 Sahla was in her garage baking bread while her husband and children were out when a car bomb went off outside her home, causing the oven she was using to explode. Sahla’s neighbors heard her screaming and came to her aid, putting out the fire with blankets and calling her husband, who came home and took her to the nearest hospital.

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I met Haifa’a for the first time two months ago. She was very sad, and she was desperately worried about her future, because she couldn’t see, and because of her other injuries. With no children and no husband to help her, she didn’t know what to do, alone in Jordan except for her sister. Haifa’a’s daily routine has for months consisted of praying, crying and waiting for a miracle to see again.

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Wasim is 9 years old. His young parents came with him from Iraq seeking treatment, since the medical facilities in Iraq had been devastated by sanctions and then by the ongoing war and occupation. Wasim has been mostly blind since birth, despite having had several surgeries in Jordan intended to improve his vision. His family needs support to help their son see clearly for the first time.

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DAI team members in the US and the Middle East have been working for months to find help for Rasul, an Iraqi boy shot through both eyes in a firefight in Baghdad. We have just learned that — thanks to the generosity of DAI supporters — medical treatment to help restore his sight may soon be a reality.

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Hussein S. was a student attending the technology institute near his home in the Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Adel. On his way to school on February 2nd, 2006, the thirty year-old suffered several serious injuries from a roadside bomb targeting an American military vehicle. While he sustained various shrapnel wounds to his neck, torso, and extremities, it was Hussein’s head that received the most damage from the explosion. A large portion of his skull was shattered, and additional pieces of the bomb were lodged in his brain. Hussein also lost his left eye, as well as his hearing due to the intense noise generated by the explosion.

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The DAI Amman team is happy to report that Mustafa Ahmed’s surgery went extremely well, and he is recovering remarkably smoothly. The doctor who performed the surgery to insert a specially-crafted plate to patch Mustafa’s skull assures us that he will now have every chance of living a normal life. The support of DAI and others has helped him in a significant way to begin to put all that he and his family have suffered behind them.

Many thanks to all whose work and contributions made DAI’s support for Mustafa and his family possible.

The image that appears above this posting is of Mustafa following his operation, in the lobby of the hospital where his operation was performed.

The following text is taken from a letter written about Mustafa’s case by an Iraqi colleague in Jordan:

On the 3rd September 2006, Mustafa (2 and ½ years old then) was with his father “Ahmed” in the car heading home after doing some shopping for the house. They parked the car just outside their house and stood there for a couple of minutes chatting with a couple of Ahmed’s neighbors and friends. Mustafa was standing just beside his father – as all children of his age do. It was sunset time in Saidiya district in South Western Baghdad.

A car came to park slowly in front of the three friends, the window was lowered slowly, and before they knew it, a machine gun nozzle appeared and started shooting at the group. Ahmed and Mustafa were hit at once; the three others ran inside the house to escape the bullets. Two of the men from the car got down and ran inside after the group and finished them off in the kitchen in front of their families and kids; before running away, the attackers shot Ahmed – who was unconscious – again to make sure he was dead.

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