Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Miami Herald
June 14, 2008 Dr. Muthaffar Kurukchi has the means to leave Iraq, but he continues to see patients daily at his hospital named for hope.
By Hannah Allam, McClatchy News Service
BAGHDAD--Amal Private Hospital, named after the Arabic word for hope, stands in the center of Baghdad. Each morning, the war's broken and burned human casualties gather in the first-floor waiting room for checkups with one of Iraq's most renowned bone surgeons.
One by one, a nurse summons the patients, who are sitting outside in layers of bandages that give them the deathly look of mummies. The surgeon checks on shrapnel still embedded in the bodies of bombing survivors. He resets the broken bones of torture victims. He studies X-rays of legs shredded by bullets.
Then the doctor quickly steals home to his blockaded sanctuary a few yards from a police station, not to emerge until time for the next day's rounds at the hospital. He's already survived a kidnapping. His staff has dwindled from 36 surgeons to six.
With his British residency and comfortable savings, Dr. Muthaffar Kurukchi could leave, too, joining more than 15,000 Iraqi medical professionals who have fled the country since the war began.
Yet he continues to show up each morning, smiling and bespectacled as he works his way through at least 60 cases before 4 p.m.
He is heartbroken over the fragmenting of his country and disillusioned by the unfulfilled promises of the U.S. occupation, but he's determined to stay.
Kurukchi graduated from Baghdad University's medical school in 1963. He spent a few years in England, where he married a British woman, Mary Rogers, before returning to Iraq in 1971.
He became one of the country's orthopedic pioneers, treating the horrendous war wounds of young Iraqi soldiers returning from the Iranian front in the 1980s. His salary was about $360 a month; he supplemented it by opening Amal Private Hospital in 1989.
''For the government, we were working for peanuts, but at the same time, we had the ability to give medical services to the rich, to our neighbors the Kuwaiti princes, to the Palestinians,'' Kurukchi said. ``I was able to live a very good life. Six hours of my day went to the poor, and I had the rest to myself, and I made very good money.''
Kurukchi watched from a hotel rooftop as U.S. armor rolled into Baghdad five years ago. His family was abroad, but his wife's cousin was covering the war for a British television channel. The cousin let him watch the scene through the lens of her video camera, zooming in on the advancing foreign forces.
''I knew things had come to an end,'' he recalled. ``It was horrible. I knew what was coming. In other words, what's going on now.''
Kurukchi's despair grew as looters rampaged through local hospitals, carting away computers, medical files, thousands of dollars in lifesaving equipment. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the mobs set upon his own hospital. He made a bold decision: to approach the U.S. Marine unit at the end of his street.
'I walked up and said, `Where's your captain?' '' Kurukchi recalled. ' `Tell him I have beer and that I would like to invite him to my home.' ``
He said the captain showed up that day, and the next. They forged an unlikely friendship.
''He was smelly,'' Kurukchi said. 'I asked him, `When did you last have a bath?' He said, 'Three months ago.' [The housekeeper] filled the bathtub; he left all his arms in the front room and he took a bath.''
The third day after Saddam's regime fell, Kurukchi said, the looters encroached on his hospital as well as Ibn al Haithem, an important teaching institution and the country's only hospital dedicated to ophthalmology. He tracked down the Marine captain.
'I said to him, `Look, our best medical center is about to be looted. Can you do anything?' He sent me two tanks, which preserved my hospital and Ibn al Haithem,'' Kurukchi said.
Kurukchi continued to run his clinic as the mayhem grew around him. By the summer of 2005, scores of people were dying in near-daily car bombings, and a vicious sectarian war was transforming Kurukchi's beloved, cosmopolitan Baghdad.
One sweltering day that July, Kurukchi's driver picked him up from the hospital at about 3 p.m., as usual. They'd driven barely a few yards when two cars sandwiched them and blocked the route. Gunmen poured out of the cars; they threatened to kill the doctor if he exited. Kurukchi's driver was released on the spot; the doctor was bundled into the back.
''From 3 p.m. to exactly midnight, I was sold from group to group like a lamb,'' Kurukchi said. 'Every new gang that bought me switched me to their car. I said, `Whatever you want, I'll get it.' ''
The last gang leader was the fiercest, Kurukchi recalled. The kidnapper grabbed him by the belt and stuffed him into the trunk of yet another car. They drove for about two hours until they arrived at a house. Kurukchi could hear children in another room.
The doctor recalled one of their conversations:
'As a gangster, you will be injured one day and you'll be forced to go to Kindi Hospital and they're going to treat you like a dog,' ' Kurukchi said he told his jailer. `` `Release me and you can count on me to take care of you.' ''
After 22 hours, Kurukchi was released.
Interior Ministry officials summoned him to describe his kidnappers. Instead, he told the officials he'd disappeared with a woman and that the whole incident had been a misunderstanding.
The discretion paid off, Kurukchi said. The next day, he said, his kidnapper dropped by the hospital to return his cell phone and keys. After that, he came every week and had coffee, offering an inside look at a seedy, violent Baghdad underworld.
Six months into their bizarre camaraderie, the kidnapper developed an intestinal obstruction.
Kurukchi said he operated on his former captor, then never saw him again. The whole episode so terrified his wife that she fled Iraq.
She died of a heart condition last year in Jordan. Their three children -- sons Emile and Antoine, and daughter Joanna -- are scattered between Britain and Australia. Kurukchi has two grandchildren he's never met.
Still, he can't tear himself from Iraq.
''I am who I am because of Iraq. I was born here, raised here and educated here,'' he said. ``I owe these people.''
June 14, 2008 Dr. Muthaffar Kurukchi has the means to leave Iraq, but he continues to see patients daily at his hospital named for hope.
By Hannah Allam, McClatchy News Service
BAGHDAD--Amal Private Hospital, named after the Arabic word for hope, stands in the center of Baghdad. Each morning, the war's broken and burned human casualties gather in the first-floor waiting room for checkups with one of Iraq's most renowned bone surgeons.
One by one, a nurse summons the patients, who are sitting outside in layers of bandages that give them the deathly look of mummies. The surgeon checks on shrapnel still embedded in the bodies of bombing survivors. He resets the broken bones of torture victims. He studies X-rays of legs shredded by bullets.
Then the doctor quickly steals home to his blockaded sanctuary a few yards from a police station, not to emerge until time for the next day's rounds at the hospital. He's already survived a kidnapping. His staff has dwindled from 36 surgeons to six.
With his British residency and comfortable savings, Dr. Muthaffar Kurukchi could leave, too, joining more than 15,000 Iraqi medical professionals who have fled the country since the war began.
Yet he continues to show up each morning, smiling and bespectacled as he works his way through at least 60 cases before 4 p.m.
He is heartbroken over the fragmenting of his country and disillusioned by the unfulfilled promises of the U.S. occupation, but he's determined to stay.
Kurukchi graduated from Baghdad University's medical school in 1963. He spent a few years in England, where he married a British woman, Mary Rogers, before returning to Iraq in 1971.
He became one of the country's orthopedic pioneers, treating the horrendous war wounds of young Iraqi soldiers returning from the Iranian front in the 1980s. His salary was about $360 a month; he supplemented it by opening Amal Private Hospital in 1989.
''For the government, we were working for peanuts, but at the same time, we had the ability to give medical services to the rich, to our neighbors the Kuwaiti princes, to the Palestinians,'' Kurukchi said. ``I was able to live a very good life. Six hours of my day went to the poor, and I had the rest to myself, and I made very good money.''
Kurukchi watched from a hotel rooftop as U.S. armor rolled into Baghdad five years ago. His family was abroad, but his wife's cousin was covering the war for a British television channel. The cousin let him watch the scene through the lens of her video camera, zooming in on the advancing foreign forces.
''I knew things had come to an end,'' he recalled. ``It was horrible. I knew what was coming. In other words, what's going on now.''
Kurukchi's despair grew as looters rampaged through local hospitals, carting away computers, medical files, thousands of dollars in lifesaving equipment. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the mobs set upon his own hospital. He made a bold decision: to approach the U.S. Marine unit at the end of his street.
'I walked up and said, `Where's your captain?' '' Kurukchi recalled. ' `Tell him I have beer and that I would like to invite him to my home.' ``
He said the captain showed up that day, and the next. They forged an unlikely friendship.
''He was smelly,'' Kurukchi said. 'I asked him, `When did you last have a bath?' He said, 'Three months ago.' [The housekeeper] filled the bathtub; he left all his arms in the front room and he took a bath.''
The third day after Saddam's regime fell, Kurukchi said, the looters encroached on his hospital as well as Ibn al Haithem, an important teaching institution and the country's only hospital dedicated to ophthalmology. He tracked down the Marine captain.
'I said to him, `Look, our best medical center is about to be looted. Can you do anything?' He sent me two tanks, which preserved my hospital and Ibn al Haithem,'' Kurukchi said.
Kurukchi continued to run his clinic as the mayhem grew around him. By the summer of 2005, scores of people were dying in near-daily car bombings, and a vicious sectarian war was transforming Kurukchi's beloved, cosmopolitan Baghdad.
One sweltering day that July, Kurukchi's driver picked him up from the hospital at about 3 p.m., as usual. They'd driven barely a few yards when two cars sandwiched them and blocked the route. Gunmen poured out of the cars; they threatened to kill the doctor if he exited. Kurukchi's driver was released on the spot; the doctor was bundled into the back.
''From 3 p.m. to exactly midnight, I was sold from group to group like a lamb,'' Kurukchi said. 'Every new gang that bought me switched me to their car. I said, `Whatever you want, I'll get it.' ''
The last gang leader was the fiercest, Kurukchi recalled. The kidnapper grabbed him by the belt and stuffed him into the trunk of yet another car. They drove for about two hours until they arrived at a house. Kurukchi could hear children in another room.
The doctor recalled one of their conversations:
'As a gangster, you will be injured one day and you'll be forced to go to Kindi Hospital and they're going to treat you like a dog,' ' Kurukchi said he told his jailer. `` `Release me and you can count on me to take care of you.' ''
After 22 hours, Kurukchi was released.
Interior Ministry officials summoned him to describe his kidnappers. Instead, he told the officials he'd disappeared with a woman and that the whole incident had been a misunderstanding.
The discretion paid off, Kurukchi said. The next day, he said, his kidnapper dropped by the hospital to return his cell phone and keys. After that, he came every week and had coffee, offering an inside look at a seedy, violent Baghdad underworld.
Six months into their bizarre camaraderie, the kidnapper developed an intestinal obstruction.
Kurukchi said he operated on his former captor, then never saw him again. The whole episode so terrified his wife that she fled Iraq.
She died of a heart condition last year in Jordan. Their three children -- sons Emile and Antoine, and daughter Joanna -- are scattered between Britain and Australia. Kurukchi has two grandchildren he's never met.
Still, he can't tear himself from Iraq.
''I am who I am because of Iraq. I was born here, raised here and educated here,'' he said. ``I owe these people.''