HANDS OF HOPE

New York Post ^ | 5/28/04 | DEBORAH ORIN

[kattracks]

May 28, 2004 -- IT'S their gentleness, their sense of joy and optimism, that's so amazing — and so moving — after the savagery they faced. They are seven Iraqi men whose right hands got chopped off on Saddam Hussein's orders on charges of trading in U.S. dollars. Chopped off by doctors in an obscene travesty of medicine, but so sloppily that they were in constant pain.

They are here, thanks to filmmaker Don North and the kindness of many Americans to arrange free treatment and individually cast high-tech right hands that have given back some of what they lost.

Like Nazar Joudi, 41, who wrote a final letter to his wife with his right hand before it was chopped off — and now has used his new artificial right hand to write her a new letter of hope.

"I arrived in the United States with one hand — I am leaving with two," said Hassan al Gearawy, 42, who sported a small American flag in his lapel and is thrilled that he can now hold two of his children by the hand at the same time.

Somehow they manage to speak without bitterness and even talk hopefully of reconciliation with people from Saddam's regime.

[conservative in nyc]

It's about time this positive story gets more play. So far, it has been in the Wall Street Journal, Houston Chronicle, (U.K.) Sun and, according to Ms. Orin, the Washington Post.

Like Ms. Orin, I'm still holding my breath waiting to see this in the Slimes.