"Time will tell," Miller said. "Time will tell."
Now Marwa lay in recovery. Her eyes opened slightly. Saad stood above her. He held her right hand, stroked her forearm and prayed in Arabic. "In the name of the merciful and compassionate God, say, 'He is God alone, God the eternal.... ' I seek refuge in the Lord of daybreak, in the Lord of men, the king of men, the God of men.... "
She moaned. I wondered how she felt. In Arabic, Saad asked her what was wrong. "She says, 'The pain, it is bad. Very bad.' "
Marwa looked at Saad and muttered softly in Arabic. "What did they do to me? Why did they do this?"
Saad looked up to heaven, then at me. She was more than just a kid he was trying to help. She was a symbol. "We have hurt this little girl," he said. "She didn't deserve this. The children of Iraq, my people, they don't deserve the pain they are taking. Now I have this little one to take care of .... She represents the tragedy of Iraq."
He tightened his lips and shook his head.
Marwa clutched his hand.
He looked at me again. "What would you do?" he asked. He was thinking of her future.
"Should I intervene, maybe even try to keep her here, so she wouldn't have to return? What should I do, as her guardian? Heal her and then let her go back to that war zone?"
There were no good answers. How moral would it be to heal a child and then send her directly back into the teeth of war? How moral would it be to keep her here, to separate her from her family?
Marwa tried to stifle her moans. Her eyebrows tensed.
She whimpered and opened her mouth slightly. A single tear formed at her right eye.
Slowly, it rolled down her cheek.
A land so new
MARWA turned 12. America was odd and amazing. Everywhere she went her eyes grew wide, sometimes with fear and disdain, sometimes with wonder. When she was not at UCLA, she flew kites, walked on the beach and ate Fosters Freeze treats. At an Islamic Chinese restaurant in Alhambra, Saad introduced her to egg rolls. She didn't like them.
From inside Saad's old Mercedes-Benz, she gaped at everything. "So many cars, so many cars," she would say in Arabic. Saad translated. "It's all so big, so rich, so clean." She said she wanted a sports car, a convertible.
She stared at tight, low-cut jeans, skin-hugging tops and shirts with sleeves above the elbows. She said she wanted some of those clothes too.
