These Kids Need Help And Smiles
By AMY PAGNOZZI
The Hartford Courant
February 23, 2001
We'd expected she'd be frightened out of her wits.
It would have been natural. Most kids bawl at the sight of needles, never mind doctors and hospitals.
But 7 1/2-year-old Hiam gamely hopped up on the examining chair at Yale-New Haven Hospital - a gritty grin on her puss as Dr. Zachary G. Klett pushed and pulled the eyelid over her empty right socket.
The fresh pink flesh shining beneath his flashlight eased our fears, even before his words confirmed that the wound "has healed incredibly well."
"The surgeon did very good job," the doctor enthused.
Hiam's mother, Um Yahya, a stray tear betraying her resolute stoicism, untensed visibly, even though she and Hiam speak only Arabic.
Humans communicate with hearts as well as tongues. Better sometimes.
Klett's relief was palpable as he picked up a pamphlet, pointing out a diagram of a molar-tooth-shaped silicone implant he'd determined was already inside Hiam's socket.
The implant the surgeons at Nasser Hospital in Gaza had inserted kept the wound from turning into a tight scar that might have required more surgery before Hiam could have a prosthesis.
"It's amazing the hospital should have such supplies with the blockades in Israel," exclaimed Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Yale professor of genetics, who was translating a mile a minute into Arabic.
"Thank you for what you are doing for them," the doctor told Qumsiyeh, who smiled and shook his head. "To be able to do this is a blessing for me and my family," Qumsiyeh said.
His glee took me aback.
About two weeks ago, the professor was bereft when the village of Beit Sahur, which sits beside Bethlehem, was bombed again by Israeli forces.
It is the village where Qumsiyeh was born and where much of his family still lives. A bullet pierced a relative's window on Feb. 13, hitting his cousin in the shoulder.
Last weekend, Qumsiyeh was sadder still.
Some person unknown wrote to him expressing regret that his cousin had not been killed, wishing death upon all Palestinians, adding, "Your children are also good targets for Israeli sharpshooters, who need to practice their aim when firing specifically at the eyes and the knees."
It was some nut, obviously, purporting to be a member of the Jewish Defense League, a hate group that committed terrorist acts in the `80s.
The FBI is investigating the threat, which Qumsiyeh, who has a wife and son, took seriously.
But at the hospital on Wednesday, he said, "That's unimportant."
All that mattered was the dainty girl in the examining chair - a little girl who wouldn't be here had another stranger not also written to Qumsiyeh about the Palestine Children's Relief Fund in Kent, Ohio. (http://www.wolfenet.com/{tilde}pcrf/ or 330-678-2645)
The relief fund is an American nonprofit organization, which arranged the financing for Hiam's medical care and transportation here.
Qumsiyeh and his family are providing a host home and getting Hiam and her mother to and from the doctors.
Since a writer covering the last Palestinian uprising in Jerusalem founded PCRF in 1989, it has provided specialized medical care otherwise unavailable to injured and sick kids, expanding to include children from Lebanon and other Mideast areas.
Hiam arrived here with her mom on Monday via Newark airport, traveling with a 16-year-old girl named Aida also sponsored by PCRF. Hiam and Aida each lost an eye in the occupied territories to a sniper's bullet. Aida caught a connecting flight to a hospital in Houston.
In Hiam's case, she was injured steps away from her family's home as she walked with her mother to visit a neighbor who was leaving for an Islamic pilgrimage.
We know such terrible things happen, but they are hard to envisage -harder when you meet one of these kids and she looks just like yours.
Apart from her eye patch, Hiam looked like your average Connecticut first-grader in her Pokemon sweat suit and sneakers. After she returned to consciousness at the hospital in Gaza, before the extent of her injury was known, her mother calmed her by telling her that however long she lived,
she'd surely go to heaven, being the good girl she is.
"Ever since, she talks about heaven as if it was her private party - who she's going to take with her and who isn't going to be invited," her mother said in Arabic, which Qumsiyeh translated.
Still pretty despite the deformity wrought upon her by this ugly war, Hiam is also a lucky child, who will be fitted this week for a prosthetic eye.
She'll obviously never see through it - but to others she'll look as she did before the bullet stole it from her on Dec. 30.
Better a child should be smiled upon than regarded with pity and averted gazes. More smiles are needed. And we all have one to offer, even if we can't all afford to make a donation or be a host.
Anyhow, I set up an e-mail account, beakidspal@hotmail.com where we could "meet." (That's the opposite of confidential). Maybe Muslims, Jews and Christians could hook up to help these kids and end up smiling at each other as well.
Who knows?
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