It was the first email I ever received from Baghdad and one I’ll never forget. Christmas was a month away when I received an email from a U.S. solider stationed in Baghdad, Iraq named Lieutenant Charles Duggan.
Lieutenant Duggan told me he was working with a sheik in Baghdad and the sheik had a son that had a pretty severe cleft lip and palate. Duggan wanted to help him get surgery. He first went to Doctors Without Borders for help but they told him they don’t do clefts. Go to Smile Train, they said, they’re the world’s biggest cleft charity.
When I read his email, my first reaction was wow – what a great person this Lieutenant Duggan must be.
Here he is, in the middle of a war zone, leading his 20-man platoon from the 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team around Baghdad every day with IED roadside bombs going off right and left, insurgents lobbing grenades every where and snipers shooting people including the woman headmaster of a prominent girls school that month.
While they’re trying to stay alive and not get blown up or shot, somehow Lieutenant Duggan has the time to search for a cleft surgeon to save a little 3-year old boy named Abdullah
His cleft lip was major and the hole in his lip ran all the way back to the hole in the roof of his mouth, his palate. This made it impossible for him to speak or eat properly. He was suffering from severe malnutrition – you could see his ribs and he was half the size of other boys his age.
Many babies born with his condition die right away because it is almost impossible to breast feed. And he had constant ear infections also which was damaging his hearing.
Against all odds, Abdullah survived his first three years. But without surgery, his prospects were extremely bleak. Even if he lived, it wouldn’t be much of a life. The way he talked people thought he was mentally impaired – which he wasn’t. And he would never go to school, have any friends, get a job or marry.
To make matters worse, Abdullah’s unrepaired cleft would make it almost impossible for his two sisters to ever marry because everyone would think their family was cursed. It’s always amazed me how how completely uneducated, illiterate peasants can spot a bad gene pool but they can.
Lieutenant Duggan – who had never before even seen a cleft – seemed to know just how important it was that little Abdullah received surgery. And he got so excited when I emailed him back with some very good news.
I told Duggan he had come to the right place. We had a partner in Baghdad, Dr. Nawres, who was working very close to where Duggan was, and he was an awesome cleft surgeon and great humanitarian. Ironically I had just met Dr. Nawres at a cleft conference in Texas.
Dr. Nawres would be happy to operate for free on Abdullah and Smile Train would cover all the costs. There was only one problem.
Abdullah, his father Rehim and his family were all Shia muslims.
Dr. Nawres was a Sunni muslim.
Around this time, Sunni muslims were trying to overthrow the Shia government in Iraq and there was a lot of conflict and violence between these two groups as there has been for thousands of years.
But that didn’t stop a 23-year-old American, Christian soldier from North Carolina who provided an armed escort for Abdullah and his father to travel to Dr. Nawres’ hospital where Abdullah received a surgery that saved his life.
I almost cried when they sent me photos after surgery which speak for themselves. It was the best Christmas present I got that year. My favorite photo is the one with a Shia father smiling next to the Sunni surgeon next to the Christian soldier.
I call them the three wise men.
With all the bad news coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, this little Christmas miracle gave all of us a big smile and a little hope.
Maybe things were going to be okay after all.
