Gift of sight for Gaza girl

Bomb victim to get transplant

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

BY JEFF TRENTLY

Ahlam Abuowda was 6 years old when the bombs went off.

The bombs were nothing new -- she had lived her life among Israeli bombs in the Palestinian Gaza Strip. The bombs were everywhere, every day.

But this day, the bomb blast was too close. It burnt her corneas, scarring the tissue in both eyes.

Six-year-old Ahlam was going blind.

Ahlam is 16 years old now. Her vision has deteriorated. She can't see anything farther than one foot in front of her face.

But Ahlam has traveled close to 6,000 miles for a chance to see again.

Dr. Michael Wong, a Princeton- based ophthalmologist, will perform a surgery today on Ahlam that is expected to restore vision in her right eye.

For Ahlam, the world is dark and fuzzy. She gets headaches and struggles with simple tasks.

In Gaza, the bombing that took her vision is part of her daily life.

"You don't know if you're going to be alive the next day," she says through a translator. "You don't know if tomorrow will come."

Ahlam lives in her grandfather's two-bedroom house with her parents and 13 younger siblings. The roof has been blasted off part of the house and there is no heat.

Ahlam has friends who were killed in the bombings, she says.

Life is desperate for the Palestinians who live there. Medical care is primitive.

In Gaza, Wong says, they don't have cornea transplant tissue.

There is no sterile hospital.

"It's been bombed," he says.

Life for Ahlam was mostly spent indoors, away from the violence.

"If she was to remain blind, she'd have no hope to go on," he says. "There is bombing all around her. That's all she knows."

Wong will transplant a cornea -- the clear tissue in front of the eye, "like the crystal of a watch" -- into Ahlam's right eye this morning at the Surgical Center of Central New Jersey in North Brunswick.

Wills Eye Hospital provided the cornea from a 15-year-old girl who died in a motorcycle accident Monday.

Without the surgery, Ahlam's condition would deteriorate, Wong says. The damage could become painful and she would eventually be totally blind.

If the surgery is successful, Ahlam could have the other eye done at a later date, Wong says.

For Wong, the surgery is a routine outpatient procedure.

"This is what I do every day," he says.

But Wong knows Ahlam's situation is unique.

"Humanity has no borders. In a doctor's eyes there are no borders," he says.

Borders were the most difficult thing in getting Ahlam out of Gaza, says Nora Whisnant of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, which worked to bring Ahlam to the United States for the surgery.

Ahlam's village is bombed routinely, Whisnant says. Check points are closed. To get from one place to another you must wait hours in line.

"It's hard to get out," she says.

It took months to arrange Ah lam's visit.

Ahlam arrived in the United States last week. She told Whis nant she couldn't believe how quiet it is here. No bombing. No blasts.

"She is so excited and so inno cent and so naive," Whisnant says.

Ahlam is staying in Bridgewater with an Arabic-speaking host family. When she arrived at JFK airport, the sound of airplanes taking off scared Ahlam, says Suheir Hanna, her American host mother.

"She thought they were going to drop bombs," Hanna says.

For Ahlam, life in the United States is refreshing. She can go outside and not be afraid.

Ahlam wants to learn English and one day be an elementary school teacher in her native land.

"She has lots of hopes and dreams," Hanna says.

And when she gets her vision back?

The first thing she wants to see is the Statue of Liberty.

"Where I live, we are denied our freedom," Ahlam says. "I want to see what freedom is all about."

Contact Jeff Trently at jtrent ly@njtimes.com.

© 2007 The Times of Trenton

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