Heart to Heart

 
Faced with the choice of saving his daughter’s life while potentially jeopardizing his family in northern Iraq, Abu Sakar chose life. It wasn’t a hard decision for the father of three, but it was one laden with great risk as he left his home town in northern Iraq to head to Israel.
 
“Yes, there was a danger in coming here, but they gave me a dream,” Abu Sakar said as he watched his now healthy 10-year-old daughter, Sakar, bound through the Old City in Jerusalem and shyly smile for the camera.
 
Sakar was diagnosed with a fatal hole in her heart and would have died without a highly-specialized surgery that she could not get in Iraq. In a most unlikely scenario, a Christian organization brought this Iraqi family to Israeli doctors for a new chance at life—a complicated procedure considering the two nations do not have diplomatic relations and where, in Iraq, the mere mention of Israel can arouse sometimes lethal suspicion.
 
But nationality and religion knew no borders on the operating table, where Sakar, a Kurdish Iraqi from a Moslem family, received life-saving treatment at the hands of a Jewish Israeli doctor. “The doctors here were like friends,” Abu Sakar told Israel Today, two weeks after his daughter’s surgery. “I didn’t feel any rejection or anything for being Iraqi.”
 
Abu Sakar could make a good ambassador for Israel if he would speak about it. However, out of the perpetual fear that plagues Iraq these days, he wouldn’t give his last name, he asked that his photo not be taken, he told friends and relatives that he was bringing his daughter to Italy and he spoke softly about his experiences, worried that word would reach his hometown and extremists would accuse the family of spying for the “Zionist enemy.”
 
But he proudly let his daughter Sakar enjoy her new-found energy and endurance as she toured the Old City. Sakar, who shyly averted her big brown eyes and zestful smile, was given the go-ahead to play like a regular child her age. She was already doing things she couldn’t before, such as climbing stairs and playing, without tiring.
 
“Thank God she’s fine,” her father said. “She can do anything she wants to do now.”
 
In Iraq, Sakar’s parents were given dismal chances for their daughter’s survival. They sold a house to pay for treatments, but were told doctors there could not save her. When they heard of Shevet Achim, a Christian organization that brings Iraqis and other Arabs to Israel for heart surgery, they applied for help.
 
Shevet Achim, which means brothers dwelling (together), intervenes on behalf of Arab families who have children with life-threatening heart diseases, helping them attain visas and transporting them to Israel and back home. In Israel, the families are housed by Save A Child’s Heart, the organization that provides the Israeli surgeons who perform the operations. Only one parent or guardian is allowed a visa to accompany their child.
 
The approval process can take months if it is on a “fast track,” said Donna Petrel of Shevet Achim, who escorts the families through border control and to their destination. The Israeli Embassy in Amman performs a background check on the patient and parent which sometimes takes longer than a child has to live.
 
Petrel said that a doctor wanted one child sent to Israel for surgery on the same day he examined him in Jordan. A visa was issued the same day for the child, but he had to be hospitalized in Amman as his father’s visa took another two weeks for approval.
 
Shevet Achim has brought 518 Arab children to Israel since 2003, including at least a dozen from Iraq, with dozens more seeking visa approval and funding. The organization, founded by Jonathan Miles, began by bringing Palestinian children with heart problems to Israeli hospitals. “We see it as our mission to be a vehicle of reconciliation between Israel and its neighbors,” said Alex Pettett of Shevet Achim.
 
Save a Child’s Heart has examined more than 4,000 children between 1996 and 2005 from third world countries including Nigeria, Tanzania, Congo, Ghana, Moldova, Russia, Vietnam and Ecuador.
 
While Abu Sakar was in Israel with his daughter, his son was injured in a terrorist attack in their village. Sakar was given the doctor’s approval to rush home with her father ahead of schedule to reunite with their family.
 
But he dreams of coming back. By the end of the trip Abu Sakar, whose grandmother on his father’s side is Jewish, said his perspective on Israel had completely reversed and that he wanted to live here. “I always thought that Israel was one way,” he said. “I didn’t expect this. The people are wonderful and kind.”