A young Iraqi refugee injured in the Gulf War 10 years ago comes to the United States for treatment and asylum. She was injured in the Gulf War, and she is a Muslim. She lost her leg in the Gulf War when part of a building hit by a bomb fell on her, pinning her. They had to amputate her leg in order to free her. Naima is now a citizen of the United States, and she has been looking for work (but with no success). She is in the hospital because she has a staph infection in her stump, and she is on I.V. antibiotics treatment. (She was afraid to get treatment for her infection because of the fact that she is Muslim; and she is terrified that, if people find out she is, she will be deported back to Iraq. So she has kept quiet.) She is very shy and quiet in nature, and she doesn't trust people unless she knows them well.
I first met Naima ("Nami") Faud the other day when she came into our hospital as a patient. She came to the hospital complaining of fever and pain in her amputated leg. (She had been afraid to get treatment for her leg because she was afraid that if people found out that she was originally from Iraq, she might be deported; so she kept quiet. But in the meantime, she only managed to put her life in danger. She was now a very sick woman.) When we looked at it, we found out that she had an overwhelming infection in her stump, and she needed to be on I.V. antibiotics immediately, to clear the infection, or it could go out of control and possibly kill her. She was immediately admitted to our hospital, and I have been taking care of her since then.
Upon taking her history, I found out that Naima Faud was originally from Iraq (Baghdad), and that she had been in Baghdad during the duration of the Gulf War, and that her amputation was a direct result of that war. She was near a building that had been hit by a bomb; and part of the building fell on her, pinning her; and the only way they could free her was to amputate her leg right then and there. She later came to America because she wanted to escape the tyrannical regime of Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, and she wanted a better life for herself. She was a single woman, and she was a little older than me. She was probably in her early 40's at the most.
Naima was a short, thin woman with long, thick black hair shot with grey streaks through it, big, dark-brown eyes that held a look of fear and mistrust, and a small, dark face. She was rather pretty. She usually wore her hair covered by a scarf, as she was a Muslim; and Muslim women were required to keep their hair from showing, especially if they were around other people.
Naima was never married, she said, but she still didn't trust people, especially since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in our country; and she had been the victim of racial hatred and profiling. More than once, her house had been targeted with fires or racial graffiti spraypainted upon its walls; and she often heard people yelling at her, calling her "Terrorist" and showering her with rocks and eggs. She learned to live in fear, and this accounted for her shy, backward demeanor.
My eyes filled with tears upon hearing Naima's horrific tale; but I tried my best to reassure her; and I told her that people who treated her this way were wrong, and they had no business to treat her like an outcast. She was an American, too (she had even been sworn in as an American citizen five years ago), and she had as much of a right to live and work here, too, just like any other American citizen. I told her that it didn't matter WHERE she was from; she was now an AMERICAN, and she had a right to live here if she wanted.
Naima looked at me gratefully when I told her that; and she tentatively gave me a quick hug. I then proceeded to tell her a little about myself and my family, and we soon became friends besides patient and nurse.
A page-turning novel about a relationship between best friends that is interrupted because of betrayal , deceit, sexual promiscuity and pregnancy happens!
