When You Wake Up Everyday and Look For Beauty in Your World…..What Do You Look For?
Do You Look To the Sky….Your Surroundings…..The Faces of the People Around You?
What is Beauty? Is it a Object, a Breast Size or an Eye Color….or is it a Sound, a Thought or a Feeling.
Beauty Is What You Will Find in the Hearts of the People Who Fought to Save this Little Boy….and in the Hearts of the People Who Will Help Give Him a Wonderful Life.
Saleh Khalaf…….. “ Lion Heart ”
“Operation Lion Heart” is the story of a 9-year-old Iraqi boy who was severely injured by an explosion during one of the most violent conflicts of modern history – the Iraq War. The boy was brought to a hospital in Oakland, CA where he had to undergo dozens of life-and-death surgeries. His courage and unwillingness to die gave him the nickname: Saleh Khalaf, “Lion Heart”.
” On October 10, 2003 a small Iraqi boy in Nasiriya was walking home from school when he spotted something shiny. Nine-year-old Saleh Khalaf picked up what he thought was a ball. His older brother Dia shouted, “Don’t move, don’t move!” and Saleh began to cry. Dia ran to Saleh to protect him, but he was too late. The bomb exploded, tearing into Saleh’s abdomen, taking off his right hand and most of his left, and sending shrapnel into his left eye. Dia himself was killed.
Without immediate medical attention Saleh’s mother Hadia and father Raheem knew they would lose their younger son too. But public hospitals were short on supplies. So Raheem rushed Saleh to the Americans at Tallil Air Base near Nasiriya. There the surgeon on duty was so impressed by Saleh’s determination to live that he treated him despite overwhelming odds against his survival.
This marked the beginning of an international mission of mercy that eventually brought Saleh to Children’s Hospital in Oakland. Over the past two years Saleh has undergone more than 30 surgeries and survived several close calls, earning him the nickname “Lion Heart.” Today, Raheem, Hadia, and their four surviving children live in Oakland, where Saleh receives medical care ”
So when we wake up tomorrow, we should all rethink what beauty means to us……….
*PHOTO CREDIT: Pulitzer Prize award winning photojournalist Deanne Fitzmaurice won the highly respected award in 2005 for the photographic essay “Operation Lion Heart. Deanne Fitzmaurice’s shocking photographs ran in the San Francisco Chronicle in a five-part series written by Meredith May.
To read the Pulitzer-prize winning San Francisco Chronicle series on Saleh….. http://www.sfgate.com/saleh/
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