Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Omar's Arm (contains graphic images)  

Warning: Some of the photos in this story are extremely graphic in their depiction of Omar's gunshot wounds. Do not proceed if this is something you'd rather not see. These images are not intended for viewing by children.



I heard the story from one of my fixer friends in the north, but now, coming toward the bus to Baghdad International Airport, was Omar--and his arm.

Here in front of me, a bio mechanical marvel that fused more than just the shattered remnants of flesh and bone--but also pain and transcendence, medicine and art, nightmare and reality. This single image was a kaleidoscope that tumbled the colored rocks of emotions through my head until the only words I could exhale were not my own, but Joseph Conrad's, "the horror, the horror."

Omar Abdul Kader's arm--possessed a distorted, polarizing force that made it appear at the same time like a walking rotisserie chicken spit or a kinetic sculpture by Alexander Calder.

The metal tinker toy set of stabilizing rods and braces that formed this exoskeleton for around his shattered right forearm, commanded instant empathy and the grateful prayer, ‘thank god it wasn't me.'

It also came with it's own phrase--that would, for the time being, supplant every other greeting in Omar's life--"what happened to you?"

This, briefly, is what happened to Omar--a simple and devastating truth that on this occasion can't be swept aside by the larger myths of violence.

Omar was shot.




But unlike television or film--the wounds, physical and psychological, don't heal with an alcohol swab and a bandage. For some, like Omar, there is life after being shot, but it is never the same.

"I have nightmares all the time," he says. Not even sleep is a refuge.

Omar Abdul Kader is a freelance cameraman for ABC News. An Iraqi Kurd from Sulamaniyah. I first met him in November 2003 when he came to Tikrit where I was embedded with the 4th Infantry Division. We were covering a military raid one night and though we worked for different networks, he volunteered to shoot the segment where I appear on-camera for the story; something very difficult for solo correspondents to pull off gracefully. But getting the story out, regardless of who's byline or network, is Omar's way.

A few months later, he was in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk covering the unrest between the different ethnic groups there.

It had been seven months since the end of the war--but tensions in the city between the Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen were at a fever pitch. On New Year's Eve, Omar was videotaping a Turkomen rally when shooting broke out. It's not clear who fired first, but after the initial shots the Iraqi Police fired back.

The crowd began to panic. Omar kept taping--until he felt the shearing velocity of first, one, then a second AK-47 round, entering his right forearm. His camera arm. The bullets pulverized both the radius and the ulna collapsing the limb like a felled tree. Omar also went down, but the camera kept rolling. The Omar and the tape would later make air on World News with Peter Jennings.



"I didn't know how bad it was," says Omar, "until I looked at my arm. It was folded over in the middle. I just lay there on the street for about five minutes. Everything was still pretty chaotic. Finally I rolled over to the side of the road. My driver helped me to the car and drove me to a hospital.

Omar says he waited in the emergency room of a Kirkuk hospital for four hours while other less seriously injured patients were treated.

"It was predominantly a Turkomen hospital," Omar says, "and they knew I was a Kurd. A low priority for them."

Finally his driver took him to a Kurdish hospital in Sulamaniyah where six hours after the incident, he finally got treatment. Kurdish doctors, well versed in wartime trauma care, stabilized the arm with metal traction rods screwed directly into Omar's bones.



A friend had emailed me about the incident, but the the next time I see Omar is at Baghdad International Airport. We are both leaving the country. I'm headed home on my normal rotation back to the States; he's going to a top hospital in Frankfurt, Germany for six weeks of surgery and rehabilitation.

While we wait for our flight--he gives me a disk to download some pictures that a friend had taken in the aftermath of his shooting. It included the emergency room, x-rays and his first surgery.

The pictures are painful to look at, much more so than the contraption that now surround Omar's arm. But they are, I know, the ugly reality of what happens when bullets meet bodies.



These days it's difficult to show casualties of war on evening newscasts or in any American media outlets. The images become politically charged; take on meaning beyond their face value. But more often than not, the violence is just too grim, too hard to stomach at dinnertime.

So the question becomes this; how can those who haven't seen it--begin to understand the truth of Omar's arm?

Discuss

Kevin 9:25 PM