This image triggers a whole spectrum of emotion in me
- Thread starter Vlad
- Start date
Along with my SO's father who retired from the Air Force.
Five-year-old Youssif is scarred for life, his once beautiful smile turned into a grotesquely disfigured face -- the face of a horrifying act by masked men. They grabbed him on a January day outside his central Baghdad home, doused him with gas and set him ablaze. It's an act incomprehensibly savage, even by Iraq's standards today. No one has been arrested and the motive remains unknown. In a war-ravaged city torn by sectarian violence and marked by acts of vengeance, this attack's apparent randomness stands out as an example of what life has become in a place where brutality -- even against young children -- is a constant. "They dumped gasoline, burned me, and ran," Youssif told CNN, pointing down the street with his scarred hands where his attackers fled. As he sucked his thumb, he repeated, "I was burning." He tried to put the flames out himself.
It looks as though this boy's face melted and then froze into rivers cutting through swollen hard flesh. It's hard to see the energetic outgoing child his parents describe beneath the sullen demeanor that defines Youssif today. "He's become spiteful, I am not sure why," said his mother, Zainab. "He is jealous of everyone. If I say the slightest thing to him, he cries. He's sensitive." Even things like eating have become a chore. His face contorts when he tries to shovel rice into his mouth, carefully angling the spoon and then using his fingers to push the little grains through lips he can no longer fully open. He has also become jealous of the baby sister he used to dote on. "I sit sometimes at night and cry," Zainab said, her voice heavy with guilt. "If only I hadn't let him go outside, if only I hadn't let him play."
It was on January 15 that masked men attacked her boy, their identities still unknown. Zainab said she was upstairs at the time. "I heard screaming. I thought someone was fighting or something," she said. She ran downstairs, saw her son and fainted. When she came to, she barely recognized her child. "His head was so swollen, you couldn't see his eyes, and his nose was pushed in." "There was blood," she added, shuddering slightly. "The skin was melted off."
He spent two months in the hospital recovering from the severe burns. These days Youssif spends most of his time indoors, in front of the computer. It's only then that traces of the 5-year-old in him emerge. "He can't play outside with the other kids," Zainab said. "The other day they were playing, and he came in crying. I asked him, 'What's wrong?' and he said, 'They won't play with me because I am burned.'" She said he once wanted to be a doctor and he loved kindergarten. "He used to be the one who would wake me up every morning, saying let's go to school," Zainab recalled.
She coaxed him to tell me the few words he knows in English. "Girl, boy, window, fan," he said, his voice barely audible, the words barely intelligible. Doctors told the family there is little more they can do to help Youssif. The family can't afford care outside Iraq. So Zainab has taken a massive risk by telling her story to the world. Her husband works as a security guard, and it's too dangerous for him to talk to the media."I'd prefer death than seeing my son like this," Zainab said.
All she wants is for someone to help her little boy smile again.
http://us.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/2 ... index.html
a very sad thing to see...This is why America and England should not have gone to war. Countless lives lost and ruined for the sake of a greedy George Bush.
Very sad picture
Last friday my Bf was out having a drink with someone going to Iraq on Monday that guy was killed.
Last friday my Bf was out having a drink with someone going to Iraq on Monday that guy was killed.
Stories like this remind all of us just how short and fragile life is....how we come onto this forum, chatting about our handbags, our trivial problems....and we forget just how lucky we are sometimes, that there are others out there who may have it a little rougher than we do....It's truly a reminder for us all, to be grateful for all we have, and to be thankful for those who serve our country so that we are able to enjoy all the freedoms that we take for granted.....
I'm just shaking my head, looking at that picture, I don't know what to think. These days you hear about 100 people killed in a car bomb in Iraq, 3 soldiers killed in Iraq and so on. I just don't pay any notice any more, looking at this picture just makes me think how futile it all is, there's just no end to it...
Good luck to them both, i'm afraid they're going to need it.
Good luck to them both, i'm afraid they're going to need it.
We cannot say (without being there ourselves) if being in Iraq is a good thing or a bad thing. People die everyday. Some die from others, some die on their own, but the fact of that matter is that it happens.
We have to take this situation and be thankful that we can do this, post our thoughts without reservation. A friend of mine has been home from Iraq for a little over a week. He said that freedom is not free. I thank him. He volunteered to go there, like a lot of these men and women do. They volunteer to go there to do whatever it is that they do so that they can (hopefully) come back and continue living a free life. They all know what could happen when they sign up to do this. It is our job as civilians to give them the biggest farwell filled with love and support and to open are arms as wide as can be to welcome them home filled with love and support. And if God forbid, we can't welcome them home but rather have to say goodbye, we have to have our arms open as wide as they can be for their families who have to say goodbye, filled with love and support.
Life sucks, that is true. This image should remind us of how lucky we all are to have men and women fighting for our freedom, however that has to happen. This image should make our hearts heavy, not for his looks but because his family was able to welcome him home with their own arms open as wide as could be and give him all their love and support.
Let's be proud American's already!
We have to take this situation and be thankful that we can do this, post our thoughts without reservation. A friend of mine has been home from Iraq for a little over a week. He said that freedom is not free. I thank him. He volunteered to go there, like a lot of these men and women do. They volunteer to go there to do whatever it is that they do so that they can (hopefully) come back and continue living a free life. They all know what could happen when they sign up to do this. It is our job as civilians to give them the biggest farwell filled with love and support and to open are arms as wide as can be to welcome them home filled with love and support. And if God forbid, we can't welcome them home but rather have to say goodbye, we have to have our arms open as wide as they can be for their families who have to say goodbye, filled with love and support.
Life sucks, that is true. This image should remind us of how lucky we all are to have men and women fighting for our freedom, however that has to happen. This image should make our hearts heavy, not for his looks but because his family was able to welcome him home with their own arms open as wide as could be and give him all their love and support.
Let's be proud American's already!