a victim of savages ..

Its lunch time here at work and I can’t get the image of Youssif out of my mind especially when I look at my kids with all their sweet innocence. This time if anything should be the best times of their lives – they really live their childhood, be kids, be silly, have dreams, play, laugh cry have all the candy and the world and yet get away with it.. That’s childhood.. Curious inquisitive with out suffering.. Yet that’s not to be said for 5 yr Youssif. When I watched his story on television last night I was so overwhelmed and heartbroken. A kid with a big smile and big dreams before the incident is now reduced to anger and animosity and seclusion. Does a kid deserve a life like this? Here is the story about him , I took the liberty of cutting & pasting his story instead of just putting a link. Children’s issues are things closest to my heart so a little cut & paste doesn’t hurt …..



Boy, 5, doused in gas, set on fire by masked men
By Arwa Damon
Editor's note: CNN agreed not to use the full names of the mother and son in this article due to concern for their safety

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Five-year-old Youssif is scarred for life, his once beautiful smile turned into a grotesquely disfigured face -- the face of a horrifying act by masked men. They grabbed him on a January day outside his central Baghdad home, doused him with gas and set him ablaze.

It's an act incomprehensibly savage, even by Iraq's standards today. No one has been arrested and the motive remains unknown.

In a war-ravaged city torn by sectarian violence and marked by acts of vengeance, this attack's apparent randomness stands out as an example of what life has become in a place where brutality -- even against young children -- is a constant.

"They dumped gasoline, burned me, and ran," Youssif told CNN, pointing down the street with his scarred hands where his attackers fled.

As he sucked his thumb, he repeated, "I was burning." He tried to put the flames out himself.

It looks as though this boy's face melted and then froze into rivers cutting through swollen hard flesh. It's hard to see the energetic outgoing child his parents describe beneath the sullen demeanor that defines Youssif today.

"He's become spiteful, I am not sure why," said his mother, Zainab. "He is jealous of everyone. If I say the slightest thing to him, he cries. He's sensitive."

Even things like eating have become a chore. His face contorts when he tries to shovel rice into his mouth, carefully angling the spoon and then using his fingers to push the little grains through lips he can no longer

He has also become jealous of the baby sister he used to dote on. "I sit sometimes at night and cry," Zainab said, her voice heavy with guilt. "If only I hadn't let him go outside, if only I hadn't let him play."

It was on January 15 that masked men attacked her boy, their identities still unknown. Zainab said she was upstairs at the time.

"I heard screaming. I thought someone was fighting or something," she said.
She ran downstairs, saw her son and fainted. When she came to, she barely recognized her child. "His head was so swollen, you couldn't see his eyes, and his nose was pushed in."

"There was blood," she added, shuddering slightly. "The skin was melted off."
He spent two months in the hospital recovering from the severe burns.

These days Youssif spends most of his time indoors, in front of the computer. It's only then that traces of the 5-year-old in him emerge.

"He can't play outside with the other kids," Zainab said. "The other day they were playing, and he came in crying. I asked him, 'What's wrong?' and he said, 'They won't play with me because I am burned.'"

She said he once wanted to be a doctor and he loved kindergarten. "He used to be the one who would wake me up every morning, saying let's go to school," Zainab recalled.

She coaxed him to tell me the few words he knows in English. "Girl, boy, window, fan," he said, his voice barely audible, the words barely intelligible.

Doctors told the family there is little more they can do to help Youssif. The family can't afford care outside Iraq.

So Zainab has taken a massive risk by telling her story to the world. Her husband works as a security guard, and it's too dangerous for him to talk to the media.

"I'd prefer death than seeing my son like this," Zainab said.

All she wants is for someone to help her little boy smile again.

Article Source:- http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/22/iraq.boy/index.html#cnnSTCText

There are more photos of Youssif here …. Some are graphic some depicts the sweetness and innocence of this boy before the incident..

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/22/iraq.boy/index.html#cnnSTCPhoto

How could people hurt such a sweet and innocent kid? What are his sins? All he wanted was to play with his friends. His attack would obviously go punished seeing that they didn’t know who the assailants were or what their motives were. And now this little kid is destroyed by irresponsible acts of men who call themselves men. There are probably more isolate incidences like these which have gone un reported. War is cruel in every sense of the world and the most innocent victims are the children who have no idea what it is all about........

I end my thoughts here for now .. maybe in another blog i will continue my vents but right now i just wanted the world to see his plight and hopefully some day he will be able to smile again and live his dream of becoming a doctor .. Even in a place like Iraq and the given situation - we have to have some sense of hope ..