Injured Iraqi boy helped by LI surgeons

At North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset on Monday, 9-year-old Waad Baktar playfully challenged a nearby adult to arm-wrestle lefthanded.

The light moment had been preceded by many dark ones for the Iraqi boy, who while on his way home from school two years ago in Baghdad lost his right arm, left leg and an eye when a can he had been kicking turned out to be a bomb.

The war in Iraq has been made painfully real among surgeons and hospital staff here since Baktar arrived in April for four months of reconstructive surgery.

"People don't get to see this, the other face of war," said Dr. Kaveh Alizadeh, a plastic surgeon who performed a series of operations to restore to Waad the use of his remaining leg, and to lessen his disfigurement.

Although violence has subsided in Iraq since its 2003 peak, war-related bombings and shootings continue to claim civilian lives. In July, 396 Iraqi civilians were killed and 680 wounded, according to the Iraq government, a total that made July the bloodiest month for civilians since Waad was injured in 2008.

"There are bombings and shootings in our neighborhood," said Waad's mother, Wafaa Ali, speaking through an Iraqi interpreter who himself lost an eye when he was shot four years ago.

Waad came to Alizadeh's attention after U.S. soldiers in Baghdad who learned of Waad's plight asked a Staten Island charity, Global Medical Relief Fund, to arrange for medical treatment in the United States.

The charity's director, Elissa Montanti, a songwriter who founded her organization 14 years ago after writing lyrics to raise money for a Bosnian war victim, enlisted Alizadeh's help. She also persuaded Shriners Hospital in Philadelphia to provide the boy with prosthetic limbs.

Her organization, which has provided similar aid for victims of war and natural disasters elsewhere, so far has brought 20 Iraqi victims - blinded children, amputees, burn victims, and patients with other grievous wounds - for treatment in America.

"After the war in Iraq broke out, the gates of hell opened," Montanti said.

She has arranged for visas and other needs for a total of 106 children and their guardians and has arranged housing for them in a three-bedroom Staten Island facility provided by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York City.

"We get a lot of resistance from people who say 'Why don't you help our own Americans?' " Montanti said. "But how can we not help him? He is a picture of this war."

Ali said she was happy that Americans had helped her, and that she has been optimistic about her son's prospects for the first time since the explosion.

Waad, an energetic boy who will be returning to Iraq within days, smiled and offered to arm-wrestle.