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She was outside in my front yard when it happened.
“I don’t even remember why I went there. My three sisters and my mother were inside the house and my brother and father had gone out. I did not hear any unusual noise, as the sound of gunfire is commonplace in our neighbourhood in Baghdad. We thought that as long as we were within the boundary of our house we were safe,” says Maha tentatively.
But no place is out of harm’s way when a bloody war is waging in the not-so-far distance. The safety of Maha’s house was shattered as a bomb ripped apart her neighbourhood and sent shrapnel flying through the air.
“One part of our house fell with the impact of the bomb. As we all ran outside I discovered Maha lying unconscious in her pool of blood.
Her left leg was already severed from her body and her right leg was half detached and lay twisted next to her,” says Lamia Zahar Mahmoud, remembering the horrific sight of her daughter whom she thought had died that day on the 23rd of March 2006. As Maha was rushed to the nearest hospital the doctors decided to amputate her right leg to save her life.
The exact number of children and young people living without limbs in Iraq as a result of the daily violence is unknown. A statistical haze prevails in Iraq where it is close to impossible to collect such data.
Almost half of Iraq’s population is under the age of 18 so it is likely that half of the victims in any given attack would be children or teenagers.
Local agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) estimate that the number of maimed children and youngsters must be in thousands.
“Every explosion, air strike, fighting or targeting in Iraq makes a child injured. In addition, we cannot forget the remaining UXOs (unexploded ordnance) whose victims are mostly children,” said Khalid Ala’a, spokesman for local NGO, Keeping Children Alive (KCA).
Sixteen-year old Maha lives despite the mutilation and indignity her body has suffered.
She has lost both her legs from her hip down but she still has the shy smile of a teenage girl who is meeting strangers for the first time.
She has the resilience that is uncommon for someone her age. “I cried all the time in the hospital and my mind was dulled with pain. I was not thinking beyond my bodily pain to actually dwell upon the fact that I had lost both my legs,” says Maha. Later when reality hit her, her mother was her pillar of strength on whom she turned to.
“I told Maha to see the people suffering around her in the hospital as she could have been in a much worse state than she actually was.
“Her greatest fear when she had recuperated was going back home because she felt insecure and unsafe there,” comments Lamia who says that to this day Maha secretly cries every day in the evening around the time that disaster struck her.
According to various relief agencies children and young people make up the majority of civilian victims of war worldwide and their numbers continue to grow.
Maha was a secondary school science student and led as normal a life as she could in a country where bloody violence is the order of the day. Her life revolved around her textbooks as her father, a retired government employee, ensured that all his children excelled in school. Maha’s elder sister is studying to be a lawyer and Maha wanted to be a schoolteacher.
Maha’s life came to a standstill after the accident and after spending three months regaining her physical and mental strength she went back to school in her wheelchair. If I have lost my legs, I can still make good use of my arms,” she says stoically.
When Maha was taken to the hospital most of her upper body had bits of shrapnel wedged into it. Some were removed but others required painstaking surgery. Hence Maha and her mother traveled to Bahrain in a group of 45 children who were sent here by Naseer Shamma’s Organization for Culturing and Care of Iraq Children (OCCIC) to receive free treatment in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
After spending five months getting various treatments at the Salmaniya Hospital, Maha is ecstatic to return home. “I did not think that I would be away for so long. I miss my family and my school work is getting disrupted,” says Maha.
As for the violence that is rife in her part of the world she does not who, how, why and what started the conflict but wants to live without the fear of another disaster hitting her, or her loved ones.
As she embarks on her journey back home, Maha is determined to complete her education so that she can realise her simple dream of becoming a schoolteacher.
Exclusive report Asma Salman
