IT WAS shrapnel that brought her to Los Angeles. Hot and sharp, it pierced her legs, her stomach and her right hand. It mangled her face around her deep brown eyes, and it tore off her nose.
"I'm hurt," Marwa cried. "Mommy, I'm hurt in my face. I'm hurt, Mommy. My face."
A missile? Mortar? Whose? It was impossible to know. The Americans were invading Baghdad, and Marwa Naim blamed them. She would never forget the explosion. It had blown up her house, thrown her into the air and flung her on top of her mother. Marwa saw a hole the shrapnel carved into her mother's stomach.
Her mother lay still. Marwa saw blood. "Mommy, Mommy, get up.... "
Then Marwa's vision began to fade. She would recall thinking that she herself was dying. Or that maybe she was already dead. Before she lost consciousness, she heard her aunt screaming for her father.
"Mohammed!" her aunt cried. "Your wife is dead! Your wife is dead!"
Marwa was 9 years old.
She had been pretty, her skin soft and toffee-colored, her eyes, mouth and nose set together in perfect proportion, just like her mother's. It gave her the confidence to make herself known, even in a rough suburb like hers on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, a poor and religiously conservative neighborhood where girls settled into defined roles and rarely ventured out alone.
But now her face! Iraqi doctors removed the shrapnel from her stomach and hand and repaired the scars on her lip and around her eyes. But they could not replace her right thumb. And her nose? There was next to nothing. No nostrils, no tip. Just two holes and a small gutter covered by a zigzagging scar.
She saw her face in a mirror and cried. She was too embarrassed to go out. Everyone stared and gossiped. She stopped going to school. Other children called her "Mrs. No Nose." She hated those taunts, hated them more than anything. "Mrs. No Nose. Mrs. No Nose." She couldn't take it.
Her father got a small aid grant and opened a tiny store, where he sold chips and Pepsis to his battle-weary neighbors. That was how aid groups found out about Marwa. They offered to arrange for her to fly to Los Angeles. The Palestine Children's Relief Fund offered to buy her a ticket and find somewhere for her to stay.
The UCLA Medical Center and its chief of plastic surgery, Dr. Tim Miller, offered to restore her face -- for free.
But if Americans had hurt her, could they be trusted to heal her?
