The dreams of 'Baby Noor'

Mbale, Uganda (CNN)
Noor's father cradles her head, shaven clean of a gush of black hair. "Baba! Baba!" she screams. "Don't let go. Don't let them take me."

Her voice bounces down the outdoor corridors of a remote hospital as nurses rush the gurney toward an operating room. She clutches her father's hands as though she will never see him again.

It is not an easy scene for me to witness. After reporting on Noor and her father for more than a decade, I've grown attached; it's almost as though I am watching my own family suffer.

Noor al-Zahra Haider bears the double misfortune of being born with a life-threatening defect in a land torn by war. She was saved by an unlikely encounter with American soldiers and called Iraq's miracle baby. By all measures, it's remarkable the 11-year-old has lived to see this day.

But like her homeland, Noor struggled to stake out a brighter future. And now, once again, it hangs in the balance. I know her father is praying for another miracle.

Noor's spinal cord did not fully form at birth, a congenital condition called spina bifida. She has no movement or any sensation below her waist and is prone to excessive fluid buildup in her head.

Doctors in America implanted a shunt, or drain, to relieve painful and potentially damaging pressure in her head. But without routine medical care in Baghdad, she developed severe infections, forcing her to travel again to a faraway land, to this hospital in Uganda, for brain surgery.


Haider Khalaf al-Tamimi kisses his daughter, Noor, before her surgery. His life is guided by one thing: to make hers better.
Haider Khalaf al-Tamimi accompanied his daughter knowing the scope of the treatment and its limitations. Still, he hopes for the realization of a dream that has remained constant.

In that vision, his daughter is not a sickly child slumped in a wheelchair, unable to care for herself. Instead, Noor stands tall -- a young woman, strong and beautiful, walking with open arms toward her father.

Haider has not allowed himself to wish for life's extravagances; he considers himself fortunate just to survive each day in Baghdad. But this dream gives him strength.

He kisses Noor's dimples as nurses pump propofol through her veins and then whisk her away behind closed doors. Haider settles into a hard metal chair, his head bowed low. He can do nothing now but wait.

For the first time in the 11 years I have known him, I see him cry.

Help from afar
On a December day in Baghdad, Haider and Noor received an offer of help from a land they had never heard of: Uganda.

They looked it up on a map and were happy to learn that it wasn't as far away as America.

Haider felt both relief and anxiety. Noor's trip to the United States for life-saving surgery was a decade ago. Since then, he had not been able to access the kind of follow-up care a child such as Noor needs. So many of Iraq's medical specialists fled the country, and hospitals are without staff and resources.

Noor has to be catheterized to relieve herself and she often develops urinary tract infections. As she's gotten older, debilitating headaches have kept her home from school. Haider knows that without proper monitoring, there is a chance she might suffer brain damage.

From the time Noor was only 3 months old, I've watched Haider worry about her. He's seen Noor cry when boys on the street made fun of her limp legs, her feet contorted in unnatural positions and dangling off her wheelchair. He's heard Noor yell out of anger and frustration when her stepbrothers and cousins ran up the stairs at home to play and she was left alone.


Noor al-Zahra Haider is growing up with disabilities in a war-torn land. Desperate for care, she and her father traveled to a hospital in a remote part of Uganda, a place that felt alien to them in many ways.
Teachers told him his daughter is bright, but no public school would take her. He couldn't afford a private education. So he is forced to send her to a special school for the di