Susan Phalen, a 1992 UNL graduate, delivers donated stuffed animals to children at a hospital in Baghdad. She is the director of the Global Outreach Team for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
COLLEEN KENNEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 7:00 pm
This story begins at the Cracker Barrel on North 27th Street and ends in a U.S. Army hospital in Baghdad, in the rooms of Iraqi children.
It goes “beyond the blood and the bombs,” and it’s the type of good news that UNL graduate Susan Phalen, who works with the State Department’s public affairs team in Iraq, tries to point out to CNN and the other journalists over there.
Susan lives in the Green Zone, a walled-off area of central Baghdad. It’s a safe place, for Baghdad. People enter through checkpoints. At night, Susan goes home to a two-bedroom trailer in a neighborhood of trailers called the “Palisades.”
The trailers are like the ones you see at construction sites, she says. She stays at work as late as she can because there’s not a lot to do.
This story happened Tuesday, and she told it that night before going to sleep, nine time zones away.
Tuesday morning in Baghdad
Susan heads to the Army hospital, also in the Green Zone, to visit Iraqi patients. Usually she walks, but she drives because there’s a sandstorm.
She visits the hospital a lot to look for story ideas, and just to be with the soldiers and Iraqi children.
“Anything we can do — taking candy, taking toys. It’s got to be very disorienting to these little kids who don’t have any adults with them. They see all these Army soldiers there, the unfamiliar environment and people poking them with needles.”
On lucky days, she finds no kids.
Tuesday morning, she counts six.
The first child is a malnourished 13-month-old girl. Her name is Shahar. Her parents were killed in an IED attack, and her grandfather had been caring for her.
Susan sees an Army nurse holding her, rocking her. The nurse says Shahar is having a hard time digesting food but is slowly getting better.
Shahar moans.
This hurts Susan to hear.
The nurse tries to get her to eat a piece of Cheerios.
The second child is 7-year-old Mohammed. A sniper’s bullet pierced his jaw and cheek. His mouth is wired open. He’s much more active than the last time she was here.
The third child is 5-year-old Zaib. He was caught in crossfire and shot in the stomach.
The fourth child is a 10-year-old girl. She shares a room with her father. They were injured in an IED attack that killed her mother. Both are groggy from surgery.
The fifth child is a 10-year-old boy, shot in the stomach and also just out of surgery.
The sixth child is a probably a girl, because long hair hangs down from the gurney. She looks to be from 6 years old to 10. From a distance, Susan sees doctors hover over the girl, working on her.
Earlier this month at the Cracker Barrel
Susan’s parents, Tom and Gwen, are visiting her grandmother in Lincoln. They go to the restaurant on North 27th and start chatting with Royalee Rhoads, retail manager.
They tell Royalee about their daughter’s life in Iraq and what she sees, beyond the bombs and the bloodshed.
They tell Royalee about the children she visits in the hospital and Royalee says, Well, maybe Cracker Barrel can do something for the kids over there.
Tuesday afternoon in Baghdad
Two cardboard boxes arrive, a dozen furry toy bunnies inside. Pink. White. Purple.
Susan pulls out six of them and drives back to the hospital.
The first child, the malnourished girl, sits upright in her bed. A nurse feeds her Cheerios, a little bit at a time.
The baby is no longer moaning. Susan sets the bunny beside her, and the baby looks at it. The bunny is bigger.
The second child, Mohammed, the boy with the mouth wired shut, tries to smile when he sees the bunny.
The third child, shot in the stomach, doesn’t seem as playful as he did in the morning. Maybe his pain medicine has worn off, Susan thinks. His father is there now, and takes the bunny.
The fourth child and the fifth child, both still groggy from surgery, get bunnies, too.
She finds out the sixth child, the one with the long hair, didn’t make it.
So she leaves the last bunny with a nurse, for another day.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.