Col Abduhl Hussein

9 Apr 07
Earlier I mentioned that Col Abduhl Hussein lost his 4 year old son to leukemia just 2 weeks before I arrived but still comes to work each day simply to keep his mind occupied. Today, I walked past the colonel's office and noticed he had a picture of his son displayed on his computer screen. I stopped out of sight for a second to steal a glace of the small, good looking boy. A few minutes later I was passing his office again but from a different corridor and saw the colonel himself. He was wiping tears away from his eyes.

I asked Adnan about the colonel. He said Col Abduhl Hussein has several children but had a special relationship with this son. He and the boy did everything together. The boy wouldn't eat his dinner until the colonel was there to eat with him; the colonel had to bathe him; he only went to the barber with the colonel; if the colonel wasn't on duty, the boy was with him.

They could have taken the boy to Jordan for surgery that could have saved his life, however, the surgery cost $35,000—a fortune in Iraq. The squadron commander here, Col Sami, tried to get help through the Iraqi Ministry of Defense while SciFi worked with the U.S. command and State Department but there was no help to be had. Colonel Abduhl Hussein and his family had to take their boy home and watch him pass.