Helping one girl face the future with hope

Marwa didn't believe it. She ducked and tucked her head against Theresa's shoulder. She opened her mouth and closed her eyes.

Pop-pop-pop.... Boom!

Men fell into the water.

One blast shook the ground. It must have sounded like the explosion in Iraq that changed her life. Could she take it?

Finally, she looked up. She saw that Theresa was smiling and laughing. Everyone was applauding.

By the end of the show, Marwa was applauding too.

The day was darkened by thoughts of my father. He had fallen gravely ill with heart disease, and I was worried. Marwa could tell. "He could die," I told her -- really die, not like the men in Waterworld.

She said she would pray for him.

On another Saturday, she practiced putting makeup on Theresa, who woke to find her eyes caked with black liner and thick blue shadow, her lips painted bright red, her cheeks plastered with rouge. When Theresa drove her home to Saad's house, Marwa said: "I don't know why I love you, but I do."

Marwa looked at her nose in the rearview mirror. It did, indeed, seem like a nose. "I like the way I look now," she said. "You are so good to me, so nice. Do you love me too?"

"Yes, of course I do," Theresa would remember saying. "You are special to me. You are like the daughter I never had."

"I like that," Marwa said. She clutched Theresa's arm. "That makes me happy."

On May 10, Marwa had her fourth operation. By now, doctors were making progress with the hair that had been growing in little clumps on her nose. They used a laser to kill the follicles. Still, there was more to be done.

Before her anesthetic, Miller walked into her room, smiling. Her nose had a few lumps. A thin scar stretched from her eyebrow to her hairline. But he thought he could diminish those things. And he had a surprise.

"This," he said, "is probably going to be our last time."

"OK," she shot back in English. "Be careful."

He laughed. She knew so much English now. Gone was the shy, scared girl he had met back in February. Earlier in the week, she had come to his office. She wore a new ensemble: a fashionable pair of white jeans, a pink top and a pink \o7hijab.

\f7She clasped his hand and held it tight for a full minute.

He teased her.

She giggled, then looked him in the eye and winked.

During the surgery, Miller opened her nose with a scalpel. He trimmed and shaped the cartilage at its tip, then cut bits of bone that had formed a little hump at the ridge and flattened it slightly.