U.S. Soldier Gives Wounded Iraqi Boy Second Chance at Life
(Here’s the shorter version I wrote for this month’s Reader’s Digest at the Global Medical Relief Fund)

Major Kevin Berger felt every muscle tense, poised for the onslaught of wounded bodies that would soon pour through the ER doors. The loudspeaker announcement just minutes earlier had barked the dreaded command: All available personnel are needed at the Airforce Theater Hospital. Stat! A car bomb had exploded in a nearby village. The 48-year-old civil engineer had frequently volunteered as a medical technician at the hospital during the past ten months in Iraq. But as the ER filled with the wails of wounded civilians, he thought how some things you never really get used to. His stomach churned at the sight of his first patient: a small boy on a stretcher, big brown eyes dazed and in shock, covered head to foot in blood and dust. Berger took notes and handed doctors and nurses medical supplies as they ripped off the boy’s pants to examine his wounds. That’s when Berger saw that the child’s leg was blown off below the knee; he felt sick, knowing there was no hope of him walking again.

Berger locked eyes with the weary-looking man beside the stretcher, holding the boy’s hand. He imagined how the Iraqi man felt, picturing the faces of his own two small children back in Glen Ellen, California. While four-year-old Sajjad was in surgery, getting his lower leg amputated, Berger stopped in the waiting room to see his father. “I put a hand on Leftah’s shoulder and he looked up with such concern in his eyes⎯no translation needed there,” says Berger, who smiled and gave Leftah a thumb’s up. “I wanted to let him know his son was in good hands. I also wanted him to know he wasn’t alone, there was someone who felt his pain.”

The next day, Berger stopped by the room where Sajjad, still unconscious, was recovering. The boy’s father met the Major by raising a hand to his chest: a Muslim sign of greeting and respect. Berger put his hand to his mouth, imitating eating, and Leftah responded by making a “V” with his fingers. “He wanted a cigarette, and Iraqis aren’t allowed out on the grounds by themselves,” says Berger, who offered to accompany Leftah. “We didn’t speak, but I felt the bond between us. We’re both dads, we both cared about Sajjad.”

Then and there, Berger made a promise to himself: he wanted⎯needed⎯to do something to help this father and son who’d been through so much. But he had no idea where to begin. Later that day, Berger returned to Sajjad’s room and discovered that Leftah had left the hospital. His eldest son, 12-year-old Ahamed, had come to tell his father he was needed at home. That’s when the entire tragic story of what had happened during that explosion on September 12, 2008, began to unravel for Berger.

A Family Ripped Apart
On the tenth day of the Muslim holy month, Ramadan, Sajjad and two of his three older brothers⎯Jusein, seven, and Ali, eight⎯walked into town to bring their father home, stopping for candy along the way. Just when they reached Leftah’s barber shop, an explosion rocked the busy street near the police station that had been the target. Leftah ran out into the cyclone of confusion. People were everywhere, screaming, moaning, burned beyond recognition. To his horror, the barber saw his youngest son laying in the street, bloody and covered in rubble. He didn’t notice his other sons laying nearby.

While Leftah rushed Sajjad to three different hospitals, Sajjad’s mother was going through her own nightmare. “I heard the explosion while in my kitchen making dinner,” Lameah recalls. “My first though was my children and my husband, I knew they were in danger.”

Lameah ran to the town center, into the smoke-filled aftermath of the car bomb. “Sajjad! Ali! Jusein!” she frantically shouted, stepping over bodies, along with a throng of others desperately searching for the faces of loved ones. She bent beside a small body, so badly burned she only recognized Jusein by his teeth. “A mother knows her children,” she softly says. “Ali was nearby, alive but just barely breathing. Shortly after I took him to the hospital, he also died.”

The next day Lameah buried her sons, still unsure of where her husband and youngest child were. When a soldier called from the Air Force hospital, she felt bittersweet relief. “Leftah arrived home to find people mourning at his house but nobody had told him what happened,” Lameah says. “He broke down, crying… He felt he’d lost everything, like this was the end for him.”

A Soldier Keeps his Promise
During the next few days, while Leftah and Lameah grieved, Major Berger checked in on Sajjad as he recovered from surgery. “A nurse had given Sajjad a syringe to fill with water, and he’d squirt it at me and his doctors, then crack up,” Berger recalls. “I kept thinking that was something my own son, Joe, would do.”

Berger didn’t forget the promise he’d made to himself. He began asking doctors and hospital administrators what could be done to provide Sajjad with a prosthetic leg since the technology wasn’t available in Iraqi hospitals. They didn’t give him much hope, explaining that there were so many people they’d like to help but it was against hospital policy. How can you help one child without helping the rest? But Berger was a volunteer, so he could go the extra mile that the doctors and nurses couldn’t.

After hours of online research, Berger sent emails to several organizations, including the Global Medical Relief Fund (GMRF). Within 24 hours, Elissa Montanti, who runs GMRF out of her Staten Island home, sent a response. She’d find a way to bring Sajjad to the U.S. and the Shriners Hospital for Children in Philadelphia would fit him with a prosthetic leg⎯all free of charge. “This was a task on the scope of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and I had no idea what to do,” Berger recalls. “I couldn’t believe that with one email, I was able to secure this huge thing. I found out later that GMRF is one of the few organizations that does this work. I just happened to find the right person right away. It was like the universe was helping me out.”

By the time Leftah returned to the hospital, Berger had spoken with the hospital administrator and Sajjad’s doctors, as well as emailed Montanti several more times to find out exactly what he needed to do to get Sajjad on his way to the U.S. for treatment. All he needed was Leftah’s permission for the hospital to release his son’s medical records, and Montanti would have a translator call to take care of the rest of the details.

When Berger told Leftah, through an interpreter, about the plans he’d put in motion for Sajjad, the Iraqi man was overwhelmed. “He gave me a hug and kissed my cheek, like we were good buddies,” Berger recalls. “Then, he said, ‘With all that’s going on, I feel like you’re my father coming to give me help when I need it most.’ That blew me away.”

The Reunion
Joe Berger, age seven, shrieks in delight, waving a plastic dinosaur in the air, shouting, “You can’t catch me, Sajjad!” Hot on his trail, the five-year-old Iraqi boy giggles as he navigates his wheelchair through the maze of chairs and tables in the cafeteria where the boys met just hours ago. Sajjad hops up on his good leg, calling to Joe in Arabic as he drags his cumbersome chariot around an obstacle, a determined grimace on his face. Then, he let’s out a whoop and charges forward; nothing’s going to stand in his way at this point. Nearby, Sajjad’s mother and Joe’s father share a smile and a knowing look as they watch their sons. No words are needed on this day of bittersweet reunion between Kevin Berger and Sajjad, the boy he first met six months ago in Balad, Iraq.

In mid-February 2009, two months after Berger’s discharge, he was thrilled to get the news he’d been waiting for: Montanti finally had funding to purchase Visas and plane tickets for Sajjad and Lameah to come to the States. In fact, they would be staying at a Jesuit retreat house near Montanti’s Staten Island home in March and April while she escorted the boy to medical appointments and then for several weeks of physical therapy with his new leg.

“Helping Sajjad to get his life back is my greatest achievement, other than raising my own children with my wife,” Berger says while watching Sajjad, Joe and his five-year-old daughter C.C. play with toy dinosaurs on the floor, the youngest boy speaking Arabic and his own children answering in English. “Now, I get the added gift of an opportunity to introduce my kids to this brave Iraqi boy whose been through so much.”

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