Bond With Family Boosts Iraqi Amputee

Boy Finds Warm U.S. Host As He Awaits a Prosthesis

Ali Ameer stood on a dusty street in Basra, Iraq, one afternoon a year ago, guarding his father's cart of oil jugs. As Salwah Ameer worked nearby, the skinny, dark-haired 13-year-old -- the oldest of Salwah's five sons -- noticed something on the ground.

Succumbing to curiosity, Ali picked up the object -- a grenade -- setting off an explosion and a chain of events that eventually led him more than 6,000 miles from home, to the city of Manassas.

The blast last spring did so much damage to Ali's right hand that a doctor at Basra's Al-Tahreer Hospital amputated it a few inches above the wrist.

A world away -- in a comfortable, well-kept Manassas neighborhood -- Ali anxiously waited last week to be fitted with a replacement hand at a U.S. hospital. He also was getting a taste of American life as he spent time with Christina Frank, 42, her family and others who worked to get him here and make getting the "below-arm prosthetic arm" possible.

Ali beamed as he played a duet of "Heart and Soul" on the living-room piano with Frank, who is the mother of two youngsters and the wife of Lawrence D. Hughes, the Manassas city manager and Prince William's director of criminal justice services.

Using his left forefinger, Ali carefully struck the keys. The right cuff of his long-sleeved blue shirt hung empty.

Ali, who speaks no English, learned the song by watching Frank. When he missed a note, she nudged him playfully. They laughed.

Frank never expected to meet Ali, let alone host him in her home.

Last December, she read an article in Parade magazine about the boy and a Staten Island-based nonprofit that was trying to get him to the United States so he could be fitted for a prosthetic arm at Shriners Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.

Frank called to make a donation and hit it off with the organization's founder and executive director, Elissa Montanti. Frank volunteered to help the cause.

First, Frank's daughter Lauren Hughes, 8, and Lauren's second-grade class at Manassas's Jennie Dean Elementary School started sending letters to Ali and toys to other injured children who Montanti had identified at the Basra hospital.

Then late last month, Frank found herself on the border between Kuwait and Iraq, surrounded by military escorts, facing Ali and his aunt, Narges Amir, 36.

"It was incredible. . . . Once we saw Ali, we were all frozen in our tracks," Frank said. "He was just grinning from ear to ear. It's been a high ever since. It's refueled me."

Frank and several others from Montanti's Global Medical Relief Fund accompanied Ali and his aunt to Kuwait, then New York, Manassas and finally Philadelphia, where technicians this week began to measure Ali for his prosthesis.