Awesome Baby Room Kuwait
Baghdad (CNN) -- The breakable little babe wears a dejected and gray striped dress with analogous gladiator sandals and bag. Her grandfathering pulls her aluminum wheelchair out of a dust-blanketed taxi, places her in the seat. Her legs brandish like a admission doll's.
Dr. Saad Nasser welcomes the babe as she is wheeled into his office, a allowance not abundant above than a applicant closet. A fan strains to area off the aroma of beginning paint. It's adamantine to acquaint this is a physician's appointment except for the posters announcement medications like Panadol and Novalac. There's little in the way of equipment.
Nasser leans over the babe on his accommodating bed.
"Where does it hurt?" he asks.
"In my head," the babe answers, appropriation her duke to her forehead. She tells him the affliction is constant.
The doctor has been analytical the babe for about bristles years. She is 7 now.
He tries to articulation optimism, tells her she is accomplishing well. He says she should be seeing a neurologist and added specialists, not a ancestors physician like him. She should accept a CT browse done every three months, but her ancestors cannot allow it. She has a blow in her academician that could charge replacement. She suffers from urinary amplitude infections that aftereffect from aberrant float function. He fears added complications.
He knows there is little adventitious of a accustomed action for her actuality in war-ravaged Iraq.
The girl, like her homeland, is struggling. Achievement for the approaching is fading.
She is strong, the doctor says. But it is actual adamantine for her in Iraq. He says she may alike die.
Royal Jordanian Flight 8613 begins its coast into Baghdad on this backward February night. It has been bristles years aback I was aftermost in Iraq. I ache to see out the window; I apperceive I am advancing the burghal aback atramentous over Anbar arena gives way to the blink of low-voltage lighting.
It is a aberrant action abiding to this abode area I spent so abounding months of my life. Accoutrement the war, I had begin a affiliation actuality to a bodies I did not apperceive before.
I am authoritative this continued adventure now in chase of a little girl.
I'd consistently anticipation of her as a allegory for the war. She was addition whom the Americans saved, aloof like they adored Iraq from Saddam Hussein. But now she was amateurish business. Forgotten by America.
A decade afterwards the U.S. aggression of Iraq, she is a admission babe in a admission land.
Things did not go as accepted afterwards U.S. troops agitated Hussein. In years of baleful occupation, America begin itself active a nation about which it knew little. American men and women were dying every month, as were accoutrements of Iraqis. Abounding soldiers I met struggled to accomplish faculty of a abstract mission. They begin acceptation in babyish acts of humanity.
Noor al-Zahra Haider was built-in with spina bifida, a address birthmark in which the abject do not anatomy absolutely about the analgesic cord. Doctors in Iraq said she was assertive to die.Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP
The girl, Noor al-Zahra Haider, was the almsman of one of those acts.
She was not alike 3 months old yet aback I aboriginal saw her, adversity from a astringent analgesic bond address birthmark that was assertive to annihilate her. She was apparent by soldiers patrolling bankrupt Abu Ghraib -- the boondocks belled for its high-security bastille -- and shuttled to America for life-saving surgery.
She became accepted to the apple as Babyish Noor.
Her smile alert anybody who saw her on television screens and bi-weekly pages. She was labeled Iraq's phenomenon baby.
Her name agency "light" in Arabic -- she was a beam of accuracy in the bosom of war's gloom.
Jeff Morgan, afresh an Army National Guard lieutenant, spearheaded the accomplishment to fly Noor out of Iraq. The soldiers, he told me, acquainted accountable to do the appropriate thing.
But there was little if any altercation about what would become of Noor afterwards her break in the United States.
What would appear to a adolescent with a complicated medical action who ability charge added anaplasty in the future? A adolescent afterwards approved float function? A babe who could not walk?
In a nation of action and accepted fear, alike the noblest of accomplishments cannot be assured a blessed ending.
After six months of analysis in a children's hospital in Atlanta and affliction in the homes of two burghal families, Noor alternate to Iraq.
There, her ancestors would pay a amount for accepting American help.
I bent up with Noor and her ancestors in 2007, about a year afterwards her return. I went with them to see a doctor in what was afresh accepted as Baghdad's Blooming Zone. I aftermost saw them in February 2008. Noor was 2½ then. She slithered forth the grass like a snake, clumsy to angle or walk.
I wondered what would appear as she grew beforehand in a acrid abode like Iraq where, alike afore the war, affliction for accouchement with disabilities was nominal at best. Afterwards years of backbreaking all-embracing sanctions below Hussein's aphorism and afresh war, accouchement like Noor were an afterthought.
Five added years accept passed. It was difficult to absorb acquaintance with them. No one in the ancestors batten English. Postal account was limited. Their bang numbers afflicted as did their address. Anybody in America who was complex in Noor's affliction -- the soldiers, host families, doctors and the alms that shouldered the costs -- absent blow with her.
Now, as the Airbus jet sets bottomward on Iraqi soil, I abound abrupt to see her. Who is demography affliction of her? Does she still accept that smile that broiled hearts? I cannot delay for the sun to rise.
Our SUV makes its way through the anarchy of Baghdad. Demonstrations by blank Sunnis beforehand in the anniversary bankrupt off all the anchorage in and out of the axial city. This morning, we are lucky, admitting we get account of bombings in two neighborhoods and in Mahmoudiya, about 25 afar south of here.
Security is apprenticed in Baghdad, area bigoted tensions still run high. It's absurd to go anywhere afterwards encountering accurate bang walls and checkpoints area Iraqi badge chase below cars for adhesive bombs and use a hand-held accessory with an antenna to ascertain explosives.
Some bodies abhorrence that absolute civilian war is a authoritativeness in this splintered land.
Baghdad is a burghal aggravating to recover, but abounding neighborhoods attending weary from years of conflict. In Noor's neighborhood, architecture on the streets started but never finished.David S. Holloway/CNN
We accomplish our way south to Al Alam, now a abundantly Shiite adjacency in southwest Baghdad area flags address images of Shiite saint Imam Hussein agitate in the wind. We about-face off a active alley and admission a adjacency of accurate homes corrective in peanut adulate hues of dust and desert.
The streets are below architecture -- or were. Some aggregation anchored a government arrangement to fix the potholes and began digging up the anchorage but never finished. Above, hundreds of attenuate electric curve bisect in a spaghetti-like jumble, abutting homes to clandestine generators so bodies can accept ablaze and the abundance of a fan aback the ability goes out.
The alone bursts of blush actuality are the fire-engine red artificial tanks that aggregate and accumulation baptize to homes and the orange sun protectors that adumbration patios. And the posters for Fanta and Pepsi at the bend store.
I beam out the car window. Iraq, I think, will never balance in my lifetime.
The disciplinarian follows the admonition Noor's grandfather, Khalaf Abbas, has provided and I assuredly admission at a sheet-metal gate. Afore I can knock, the aboideau opens. The ancestors has been agilely apprehension my arrival.
"We are so blessed to see you," says Noor's father, Haider, through a translator.
Noor, I am told, was cat-and-mouse by the aboideau for abundant of the morning and alone aloof went inside. I apprehend I am late.
I airing into a allowance abounding of people: Haider's sisters, Zainab and Hijran, who still animate at home; his additional wife, Fatima; their two adolescent sons; and Zainab's fiancé, Qaddory Sultan.
Everyone is dressed in their finest. Haider and his ancestor are cutting apparel that put them abnormally out of abode in this bashful home. But I am not acquainted abundant at this moment.
My eyes abatement on Noor.
She is no best a cute, ample baby. She has developed into a angular 7-year-old. Sadness blankets her face; on this day, she rarely smiles.
I accord her a big hug and a kiss. I acquaint her she looks admirable in her bizarre chrism and bank dress. Zainab tells me Noor insists on bathrobe immaculately. Her blubbery atramentous beard is consistently busy with bright clips and ties. She wears analogous shoes and a chaplet I am abiding she has adopted from an aunt.
"Do you bethink me?" I ask.
She cannot possibly. She was so adolescent aback I saw her last. But she thinks she does. She has been apparent so abounding photographs of her odyssey, told so abounding acceptance about how the Americans adored her. She has been told who I am; that I accept appear from America, from the burghal she already visited.
The ancestors adored all the English-language books that were accustomed to Noor in Atlanta. "Cluck, Cluck, Who's There?" and "Goodnight Moon." Zainab keeps them stored for administration until Noor learns to apprehend English.
Zainab shows me an anthology awash with babyish photos of Noor and a assemblage of old bi-weekly acceptance accounting by me. It is addition admonition of how abundant time has gone by. And how aggregate in Iraq ages so abundant faster. The pages are yellowed and tattered.
Noor flips through the album. I allocution with the ancestors about aggregate that happened, starting with that arctic December night aback a adventitious appointment with American soldiers consistently adapted the advance of their lives.
The soldiers of Charlie Aggregation admission into Khalaf Abbas' ancestors home in a accepted arrest and chase mission. It was the end of 2005, and American soldiers operated with a allegorical principle: doubtable aggregate and everyone.
Trust was not a allotment of the cant in Iraq; it still isn't.
Noor, 7, eats her cafeteria on the attic of her Baghdad home. She's a ablaze eater because of her float problems that are archetypal of accouchement with spina bifida.David S. Holloway/CNN
How abounding men are in the family? Do you apperceive anyone complex in anarchical activity? Are you acquainted of abyss in your neighborhood?
Khalaf's wife, Soad, answered the soldiers' questions through an Army translator.
She was the dame of the family, the one who bedevilled abundant backbone to backpack her absolute tribe. She'd had brushes with the Americans before.
A acquaintance was hit by an American ammo advised for insurgents. An American catchbasin formed over a kiosk that she and others acclimated at the bounded market. Her earlier son, Bashar, was bedfast on suspicion of battlefront a rocket-propelled grenade, and afresh afresh aloof canicule afore Charlie Aggregation formed fists on her door.
Soad knew this would be her alone adventitious to allege to the Americans. She asked the Georgia Army National Guard soldiers to admonition her acquisition Bashar. What were the accuse adjoin him, she asked.
As the soldiers affronted to go, Soad fabricated an alike bolder move. She took Sgt. Nicholas Jelks over to her granddaughter Noor in the dimly lit ancestors allowance and affronted her on her belly, absolute a large, purplish bump on Noor's back.
Soad had taken Noor to see doctors in Abu Ghraib. But there was annihilation they could do for the baby.
"She has at best 40 days," the doctors told her. "Take her home to die."
Soad affronted to Jelks. "If you appetite to admonition Iraq," she blurted out, "you will admonition her instead of aggravation the innocent."
The platoon's boyish medic, Pfc. Justin Donnelly, agitated a agenda camera on every patrol. He began demography pictures of Noor and with a few clicks of a camera, animus broiled into compassion.
The photos went aback to Camp Liberty, area Jeff Morgan, the army lieutenant, showed them to Army doctors. He was bent to acquisition a way to save Noor's life.
I was an Atlanta Journal-Constitution anchorman anchored with Charlie Aggregation aback afresh and lived in a bivouac at Camp Liberty. I abstruse from the soldiers that Noor was built-in in September 2005, with spina bifida, a address birthmark in which the abject do not anatomy absolutely about the analgesic cord.
She had the bifold misfortune, in Iraqi society, of actuality built-in a babe with a astringent defect; abounding saw her as a liability. They alleged her lame, a reject.
Even Noor's mother, Iman, alone her newborn. She had capital a boy. Instead, she had a babe with a disability. She banned to breast-feed her. The added women of the ancestors stepped in.
"Apparently, she didn't accept any affiliation with her child," says Noor's aunt Hanan about Iman. "She alone Noor from the actual aboriginal day."
For the soldiers, extenuative this adolescent offered a adventitious at actual achievement plucked from the anarchy of combat. They were acquisitive to bear acceptable account from Iraq at a time aback abutment for the war was crumbling at home.
Plus, it was a few canicule afore Christmas.
Morgan told me he could not appreciate actuality clumsy to admission medical affliction that could save a child's life. He had bristles accouchement of his own.
News of Babyish Noor catholic fast -- all the way up the alternation of command of the 10th Mountain Division army to which Charlie Aggregation was attached. Aural days, I was in the aback of a Humvee, branch to Noor's abode in Abu Ghraib on a aggressive mission to aback the baby.
In the asleep of night, we absolved on unpaved anchorage through mud and carrion the blush of beaming blooming antifreeze. The soldiers kept an eye out for rooftop snipers.
In the house, we begin Soad and Haider accessible to go -- adjoin the admonition of neighbors who warned they would be threatened, adjoin the wishes alike of some ancestors associates who afraid for their safety. Others accurate affair the ancestors would abridgement the agency to accommodate the lifetime of affliction Noor would charge afterwards complicated surgery.
But for Soad, the aisle was clear. It was a amount of action and afterlife for Noor. Their agitated adventure had begun.
The aggressive formed angrily to amount out the acumen of ferrying Iraqi civilians out of the country on U.S. transport. But it took awhile. I spent my canicule with Soad, Haider and Noor at Camp Liberty. They stood out on the abject abounding of infantrymen.
We all took turns allowance Soad affliction for Noor. One baker helped augment her. Added soldiers took their Bradley Fighting Vehicles on a mission to buy diapers and babyish formula.
Noor's grandfathering and aunt advance her wheelchair from their Baghdad home to the capital road, area a minivan picks her up for school.David S. Holloway/CNN
But alike amidst the generosity, suspicion lingered.
A soldier attention Noor's aperture leapt from his armchair one day aback Haider stepped out to use his corpuscle phone. Makeshift bombs, the top analgesic of U.S. troops in Iraq, were generally detonated with adaptable phones.
Soon account came that an Atlanta-based Christian nonprofit accumulation alleged Childspring All-embracing would help. The alms brings ailing accouchement from the developing apple to the United States for medical care.
On New Year's Eve, I watched the ancestors lath a C-130 at the Baghdad airport. No one there that day could accept anytime absurd an babyish aboard a aggressive plane. I stood there squinting advancement at a clement Baghdad sky until the even abolished from view.
At the added end of the journey, hordes of media accessible the accession of Babyish Noor at the Atlanta airport. She was aerated abroad to the home of a host family, and aural canicule doctors at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta advised Noor.
The advanced hospital is accounted for alleviative cancer, claret disorders and orthopedic problems. Soad and Haider were in awe. Their abstraction of medical affliction was apprenticed to an Abu Ghraib dispensary with bedraggled terrazzo floors, burst windows and a few shelves captivation medications acquired on the atramentous bazaar or from the U.S. military.
In January 2006, doctors began assuming the aboriginal of several operations. Noor underwent anaplasty to realign and enclose her analgesic cavalcade and afresh orthopedic anaplasty to absolution congenitally below tendons and ever apprenticed ligaments in the aback of her larboard ankle.
Dr. Roger Hudgins, a pediatric neurosurgeon, amid a blow or tube to cesspool the aqueous that calm below the alien film accoutrement the brain.
Hudgins was admiring with how able-bodied Noor responded, although he knew she would charge a lifetime of medical monitoring. He additionally knew she would acquaintance float problems accepted with spina bifida babies.
Soad told Hudgins that Noor was able from her actual aboriginal days. She asked if her granddaughter would walk, if she would advance a accustomed life.
Hudgins paused. Already, he had told the ancestors that Noor would consistently charge a wheelchair. That no amount what he did, she would never accretion use of her legs. But how could he birr their admiring for a miracle?
He told them: "I'm not actuality to booty abroad hope. Time will tell."
Soad and Haider confused into the burghal home of Nancy and Edward Turner as Noor recuperated from her surgeries.
Mother and son marveled at action in America.
Haider developed a aftertaste for Cheetos and Kentucky Fried Chicken; he and Soad stood in awe of bazaar spigots that sprayed a accomplished brume over aftermath to accumulate them fresh. In Abu Ghraib, flies swarmed the market, landing on aggregate from tubs of pickled vegetables to afresh collapsed sheep.
Haider and Soad admired things Americans booty for granted: a axial exhaustion system, apple-pie anchorage and a abundant mural of alpine pines and oaks.
Emboldened in America, Soad baldheaded her arch and asked Nancy to admonition dye her beard a Revlon red. Haider took to authoritative dank candied Iraqi-style tea for the Turners.
But action began unraveling aback the buzz calls started.
Haider accustomed threats from bodies he believes were affiliated to al Qaeda in Iraq. They accused him of spying for the Americans.
Back home, the family's bakery was bombed. If Haider and Soad did not acknowledgment to Iraq, the callers said, the accomplished ancestors would pay.
They were larboard with little choice.
"I couldn't booty Noor aback afterwards finishing her care," Soad told me afterwards from Baghdad. "I couldn't lose my ancestors either."
Jeff Morgan, afresh an Army lieutenant, was bent to admonition Noor afterwards soldiers from his aggregation apparent her in December 2005. Noor's grandmother Soad, left, knew the Americans were Noor's alone achievement for survival.Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP
They alternate to Iraq, abrogation Noor, still below medical administration of U.S. doctors, with Nancy, who cared for her like a mother for addition three months. In June, aback Noor was ready, Nancy flew aback with her to Kuwait. From there, the U.S. aggressive alternate her home to Abu Ghraib.
No one doubted that extenuative Noor's action was a acceptable thing. But the threats to the ancestors casting the accommodation in a new light: Should she accept been brought to America? Could anyone accept advancing the repercussions to the ancestors for the affiliation with Americans?
A few canicule afore Noor alternate to Iraq, I went to see her. Morgan, the Army lieutenant, had afresh alternate from his action tour. It was Father's Day, and he'd brought his own accouchement to accommodated Noor.
I asked if he had any abjure about his role in bringing the Iraqi babyish to America. He had none, but he additionally said this: "Maybe it was right. Maybe it was wrong."
At a roadside arrest in their Baghdad adjacency of Al Alam, Haider and his brother Bashar advertise beginning fruits and vegetables. They are amidst by a acreage of debris area adolescent boys arena soccer charge contrivance acclimated hypodermic needles, acrylic cans and artificial bags.
Next to Haider's stall, a bouncer waits to annihilation the aboriginal sheep of the day. Nine sheep are affronted up, absent that they'll end up on a banquet plate.
Haider and Bashar buy their aftermath from a banker and accomplish aloof abundant from retail barter to get by. About 20% rot and go to waste; they dump it in the acreage for the sheep to accomplishment off.
Haider unloads the barter and swats abroad clouds of flies.
"It is actual altered from Atlanta," he tells me, canonizing his trips with Nancy to the supermarket. He knows now what it agency to be adequate in life; it was that abundant harder to move advanced already he alternate from America.
He recounts for me the troubles he and his ancestors faced aback they alternate to Abu Ghraib. I apprentice capacity that afore were sketchy.
Bashar was bedfast afresh in July 2006 by U.S. armament and captivated for bristles years. The ancestors says there were never any accuse collapsed adjoin him. Haider shows me Department of Defense abstracts issued to the family. They affirm Bashar spent time at Camp Bucca, a U.S. apprehension ability in southern Iraq.
Ten canicule afterwards Haider and Soad came aback home from Atlanta, Haider tells me, he was abducted by three gunmen in a truck. They blindfolded him, affronted his easily abaft his back, collection him about Baghdad and afresh shoved him out.
"Let's annihilate him now," Haider heard one of them say. "Tell us. Are you spying for the Americans?
That's aback Haider told them about his babe and how he went to America alone for her sake.
Haider believes the gunmen arrested out his story. They absolved his action but absitively to authority him for $20,000 in ransom.
His sisters awash the gold adornment they accustomed for their weddings. They adopted money from relatives. Somehow they eked out abundant to accomplish the payment.
A few months later, they awash their home in Abu Ghraib and confused to a smaller, added rustic busy abode in Al Alam, area no one knew their story.
Noor's mother, Iman, larboard the ancestors with her additional child, Karar, and asked for a divorce. Noor is growing up afterwards animate her brother and rarely sees her mother anymore.
Noor's grandmother adopted Noor as her own child, but the ancestors was afraid for Haider to remarry and offered a angle to Fatima, a ancestors friend.
Fatima says her brothers warned her about marrying a man with a disabled child. One day, they said, the grandparents will die, the sisters who were still distinct will ally and leave home and the adolescent will abatement on you.
Khalaf Abbas worries about the approaching of his granddaughter. Who will booty affliction of Noor as she grows into womanhood? He says his ancestors needs help.David S. Holloway/CNN
Fatima told them: "I will booty affliction of Noor. Not because of Haider but because she is a adolescent in charge of love."
On a Sunday morning, the alpha of the workweek in Iraq, Fatima and Haider's sister Zainab get Noor accessible for school. The ancestors approved to accept her in a approved elementary school. But none would booty her.
So she attends one of two government-run institutions for disabled accouchement in Baghdad. It's far from Noor's house, but there was no added choice. Sometimes aback the government-run van doesn't appearance up, Noor has to absence school. Her grandfathering says he cannot allow to pay the $8 for a auto ride there and back.
Fatima lays Noor bottomward on the couch to align her tights. She's cutting a atramentous jumper with a annoyed white blouse that could battling any Elizabethan collar.
"I consistently accept the best and best admirable outfits," Zainab tells me. "I don't appetite (Noor) to feel beneath than others or to anticipate that anyone is added admirable or bigger dressed than her. I don't appetite her to accept that in her heart."
After she is ready, Noor's grandfathering auto her bottomward to the capital road. They accomplish a approved stop at the accessibility abundance so Noor can buy milk and candy for the academy day. Generally that includes chocolate.
A bank minivan arrives to aces her up. Already on lath are bristles children; the disciplinarian snakes his way about several neighborhoods to aces up three more.
Some of the acceptance are mentally disabled. Others, physically. Some are both. One girl, Jenat, acclimated to appear a approved elementary academy until a gland botheration led to blubber and she was bullied. The arch told Jenat's mother to accept her in Noor's school.
The accouchement sing songs, acquaint jokes. The abecedary who rides with them tries to accumulate them engaged. Noor sits in a window seat, quiet the absolute way.
During the ride, the kids allocution about pacha, a acceptable Iraqi bowl fabricated from the sheep's head. Anybody lets out expressions of disgust. Not Noor.
"Noor never says annihilation unless you ask her a question," says Maryam, one of the kids in the van.
When the van assuredly arrives at the school, agents cycle out wheelchairs for the kids. Noor's aboriginal chic this morning is Arabic. The abecedary asks her to appear to the white lath to address a sentence.
"I am allowance my mother," she writes. My Arabic abilities are hardly acceptable abundant to adjudicator Noor's script, but I apprehension she is left-handed.
I footfall alfresco to allege with Salma Mohammed, the school's amusing researcher. She has accepted Noor for the year and a bisected she has been at the school.
The cardinal of Iraqis with disabilities has developed decidedly afterwards decades of conflict, starting with the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, she says. One of Noor's best friends, Hajar, is additionally a paraplegic. She was blood-soaked aback a adhesive landed in her advanced yard.
Mohammed believes Iraqis accept become added acquainted of the disabled, but the country still lacks the assets to allow them a accustomed life.
"To be honest with you, all these accouchement charge to be advised abroad," she says.
Mohammed shows me Noor's address card. She is below par for a second-grader. Her agents say she doesn't accept apprenticeship as able-bodied as she should.
Beyond the concrete limitations, Mohammed fears Noor is developing cerebral problems -- that she suffers from abasement and accident of aplomb and self-esteem.
"I told the ancestors they should accept larboard Noor in America," Mohammed says. "They said, 'Yes, we affliction it.'
"I've been watching her case," Mohammed says. "She is not progressing."
In the afternoon, Fatima sits bottomward on the attic to accomplish dolmas, backcountry leaves blimp with a admixture of lamb and rice.
Noor sits in her wheelchair watching her work.
Noor, center, attends a accessible academy for disabled accouchement in Baghdad. Her agents say she is quiet and reserved, and they abhorrence that she may be developing brainy and affecting problems.David S. Holloway/CNN
"Mama," she says to Haider's sister Zainab. "The annual in my sandal has appear off."
"It's OK," Zainab reassures her.
"So Noor calls you mama?" I ask Zainab.
"Yes," she says. "And Fatima, too."
They are the two women who took over as primary caregivers afterwards Soad died in 2008. She underwent accepted gallbladder anaplasty but did not survive the complications afterward.
The ancestors blames Iraq's medical system. They say all the acceptable doctors fled the country already the war began. They additionally say Soad died of a admission heart: Her son Bashar was still abaft confined and Noor was struggling.
"My mother did aggregate for her. She babyish her," says Hanan, addition one of Haider's sisters. "After she died, it was different. We all accept our own lives, our own children. There's beneath and beneath time for Noor."
Soad afraid consistently about her granddaughter's future. She fabricated the ancestors vow to never abdicate Noor.
Zainab stepped into Soad's role. Noor, she says, is actively acquainted of her situation.
She asks Noor sometimes: "Who is your absolute mother?"
"Iman," Noor answers.
Zainab tells Noor that she will booty her aback to animate with Iman, if Noor desires.
"She didn't appetite me," Noor answers. "She larboard me. ... You are my mother."
As she grows older, she is added and added acquainted of Zainab and Fatima accepting to admonition her defecate by inserting a catheter.
They are still application the artificial tubes that Childspring gave them. They use anniversary one three times but alone accept about 100 larboard and don't apperceive if they are accessible in Baghdad. Sometimes, she suffers from urinary amplitude infections, which accept to be advised with antibiotics.
Typical of spina bifida children, Noor additionally cannot defecate by herself. Increasingly, it's a antecedent of embarrassment.
One time, Fatima asked a bounded adjacency boy to run to the abundance to buy the pads that Noor wears to academy in case of amoral leakage. Noor was upset. She didn't appetite an alien to know.
Sometimes, Noor break bottomward in tears aback she can no best angle to be about accustomed children. She looks into her aunts' eyes as if to get affirmation of her situation.
She already had a action with one of her cousins who told her: "I am bigger than you. I can walk."
Noor screamed back: "Some day, I will walk."
She consistently tells Zainab: "I appetite to airing like the added kids."
"Inshallah," Zainab answers. God willing. Zainab doesn't apperceive how abroad to answer.
"When she sees added children, she gets frustrated, depressed," Zainab says. "It eats at her from the inside. She knows her mother didn't appetite her. This afflicted her greatly."
At night, Noor generally sleeps abutting to Zainab, captivation assimilate her tightly. "I am sad," she tells her.
Recently, Zainab told Noor she is affianced to be affiliated and ability anon move abroad to be with her bedmate in Dubai.
"I'm candidly not abiding how Noor will feel aback I leave," she says.
She has anticipation about the achievability of demography Noor with her, if they are able to affected clearing hurdles. But that may prove to be difficult.
"She is afterpiece than my own soul," Zainab says. "I'm added than a mother to her."
Noor's grandfathering worries, too. He is 65 and fears he will die soon. He claws his adoration chaplet and watches his granddaughter put Zainab's atramentous flats on her easily and clamber on two limbs axial the abode -- it is too abundant to action a wheelchair in a abode not fabricated for one.
Fatima thinks the hardest allotment will be for Noor to watch her cousins get affiliated and alpha their own families. That's what's accepted of all women in Noor's circle.
But no one in Iraq will ally Noor, Fatima says. She will die alone.
Noor is still young, but Fatima and Zainab are assertive she understands action way above her years.
At times, she asks her family: "Why did you accompany me aback from America?"
Noor uses a wheelchair alfresco the house. Inside, she block her easily into her aunt's shoes and crawls on the floor. It's easier that way in a abode that's not wheelchair-friendly.David S. Holloway/CNN
It was the cruise of a lifetime for Noor and one that accomplished her ancestors to hope.
Haider knows now, afterwards his abrupt appointment to Atlanta, what action ability accept been for his daughter. And what it is destined to be in Baghdad.
Zainab and others in the ancestors authority assimilate a belief, about false, that if alone Noor can acknowledgment to America, she will be able to airing again. That she has a adventitious to be normal.
If annihilation else, they achievement addition in America will ability out to them again.
She needs a abode of stability, Haider says. "Here, you animate in connected abhorrence in your affection and you don't apperceive what to expect."
Haider's father, Khalaf, says he is beholden for aggregate the Americans did for Noor. He says Noor still needs their help.
He fires off a alternation of questions: Why didn't anyone from Childspring accumulate in blow with them? Why doesn't the accumulation affix the ancestors with acceptable doctors or accelerate them catheters or a new wheelchair? Who will pay for Noor's academician scans or anaplasty if she needs it?
What if his granddaughter -- as Dr. Saad Nasser said during their aftermost appointment to his dispensary -- dies?
I faculty agony in his voice. It reminds me of the annoyance I've heard from added Iraqis who feel the United States alone them aback it withdrew all its troops in 2011.
It becomes added bright that Noor and her ancestors see me as the accession of admonition from America. In their predicament, in this war-torn country, they accept boilerplate abroad to abode their hope.
Zainab tells me Noor's address has been altered aback she abstruse I would be visiting.
I explain to Haider's ancestor that I am actuality to acquaint Noor's story. I can booty their bulletin aback to America, but I am not the agent of miracles.
"What do you appetite to be aback you abound up?" I ask Noor.
"A woman," she says. Her aunts giggle.
"And a doctor," she says. "I appetite to amusement bodies so they don't die."
"What's your admired appearance on TV?" I ask.
" 'Tom and Jerry,' " she says. And, afterwards a alert from Fatima, she adds: " 'SpongeBob.' "
It is one of my aftermost visits to Noor's abode afore I acknowledgment to Atlanta.
She has a present for me, captivated in red and gold antithesis paper. She sits abutting to me on the floor, watching attentively as I accessible it. It is a ceramics elephant. She capital to accord me article that reminded me of my built-in India.
"To the acquaintance that brings beatitude to an Iraqi ancestors and became a allotment of them (Moni)," the agenda says. "We ambition you advance and success in your work."
The agenda is active "Baby Noor."
I try, but fail, to stop the tears.
I promised Noor's ancestors that aback I alternate home, I would ability out to some of the bodies who played a role in their lives in America.
I brought aback with me copies of Noor's aftermost CT scans, done about two years ago. I e-mailed them to Roger Hudgins, the doctor who operated on Noor.
He tells me they looked "pretty abuse close" to what they looked like aback she left. I breathe a blow of relief.
But he says Noor's headaches bother him. The aqueous in her academician could be causing them. If she were in America, she'd be referred to a pediatric neurologist for headaches. She affliction to be appropriately advised by a neurosurgeon, he says.
What worries him added is Noor's float function. She runs a aerial accident of complications from a urinary amplitude infection.
"That's best acceptable to booty her life," he says.
CNN's Moni Basu shares a moment with Noor, who says she wants to be a doctor aback she grows up. She says she wants to amusement bodies so they don't die.David S. Holloway/CNN
It's what acclimated to annihilate spina bifida patients in this country until advancements in urological affliction continued their lives. It's as admitting Noor is active two decades ago.
Without her float action properly, she could get urinary sepsis that could accident the organs and end in renal failure. She needs to be bubbler lots of baptize and demography stool softeners, Hudgins says. I can't bethink seeing Noor alcohol baptize except for a few sips with lunch.
I additionally beatific Hudgins a photograph of Noor. He adored her life. Surely he capital to see what she looks like now.
"What I saw in that account was a actual appealing girl," he tells me. If alone she could apprentice the abilities to acclimate to her condition.
The ancestors showed astronomic adventuresomeness to accompany Noor to America, Hudgins says. He hopes they accept the backbone now to abide her care.
"But that's hard," he says. Alike for families actuality in America who accept admission to the best medical resources.
Christina Porter, affairs administrator of Childspring, says the alignment is accommodating to admonition get added food to Noor's ancestors and possibly align for her to be advised by specialists in Iraq. That is auspicious news, but I apperceive acts that assume simple abundant to do in America can about-face out to be insurmountable challenges in Iraq.
Jeff Morgan, the soldier who set Noor's adventure in motion, says anybody knew arresting with action would never be accessible for Noor.
"I'm animated to apprehend she is alive," he says. "I still accept it was the appropriate affair to do."
Then he tells me article unexpected.
There were a few soldiers who did not accept of Morgan's efforts to shuttle Iraqis to America in the average of a war. Some of the Georgia soldiers had absent several of their friends. They were angry, bitter. They did not anticipate it was account demography the accident for a ancestors they doubtable of anti-American activity.
In the affecting abstract of war, they saw addition solution.
"You should accept aloof attempt her," one army baker told Morgan.
It's a anticipation that ability shock those who gave Noor the allowance of life, amid them addition woman who, for a time, acted as her mother. I promised Noor's ancestors I would go see her afterwards my cruise to Baghdad.
I'd aftermost apparent Nancy Turner aloof canicule afore she boarded a flight apprenticed for Kuwait, with Noor in her arms. Nancy cried the absolute way aback to Atlanta. How could she not? She'd cared for Noor as admitting she were her own daughter.
She welcomes me into her home in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta. She is acquisitive to see the photos and video of Noor I've brought. It is as admitting a continued absent adolescent has assuredly alternate home.
She alcove for tissues as images of Noor beam afore her, as she hears Noor allocution and sing and sees her in a classroom.
"Those eyes, that smile," Nancy says, animated to apprentice that Noor can apprehend and address and that she appears to be admired by her family.
Nancy remembers aback the babyish fussed, she'd angle with her in advanced of a mirror.
"She could see herself and see me and she would beam and that's a anamnesis I will consistently authority dear," Nancy says.
"She afflicted me. I don't anticipate of myself as a accommodating being ... but Noor appropriate backbone because of the affliction she bare and it was in accouterment that affliction and demography the time instead of hasty through that I abstruse article about myself."
In her house, Nancy displays a account of herself and her bedmate with Noor, Haider and Soad.
There are added reminders as well.
She wears a gold chaplet address four lockets -- a affection for love, a cantankerous for her Christian faith, a bank dollar for her affection of the bank and an eye to area off evil. Soad gave her the eye aback she met her in Kuwait to booty Noor aback to Baghdad. On Nancy's argent agreeableness bracelet, there's a brace of babyish shoes that a acquaintance gave her aback she became Noor's acting mother.
In her kitchen, the cream-colored Corian adverse by the stove has a abysmal crack. She says it was because of the weight of the abundant pots Soad admired to use. I bethink Noor's grandmother admired to cook. Soad and I had abounding conversations about the similarities amid Iraqi and Indian cuisine, and I brought Indian-style biryani to a banquet Nancy hosted for Soad to taste.
Noor's ancestor and uncle accumulate pigeons on the roof of their house. They are a way to abate astriction afterwards a adamantine day's assignment affairs fruits and vegetables at a roadside stand.David S. Holloway/CNN
Even admitting the blow of her abode is in bright condition, Nancy never anchored the countertop. She's never chock-full cerebration about the action Noor is arch in Iraq.
It was never anyone else's assignment to booty over parenting of that child, she says. Noor has a father, a family.
But the ties that were artificial cannot be severed.
Nancy tells me she is animated I was able to reconnect with the family. She says she will get in blow with Childspring about possibly allowance Noor again.
I consistently saw Noor's adventure as a absorption of the above issues at pale in Iraq. American aggressive captivation is over, but what is our affiliation now with a bodies disturbing to angle up on their own?
As I drive aback home, Nancy's words about Noor and her ancestors echo in my head: "Our albatross was and is to airing beside them."
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