PCRF Provides Medical Care to Maimed Palestinian and Other Arab Children

By Pat and Samir Twair


	(l-r): Dr. Musa Nasir, Lily Karam and Hany Abu-Assad (Staff photo S. Twair).

SINCE IT WAS founded in 1991, the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund has provided medical treatment to 4,000 seriously ill and wounded children in the Middle East and has brought 700 youngsters to the U.S. for surgery. A video by President Jimmy Carter praising PCRF for its lifesaving work opened the Nov. 4 gala of its Southern California Chapter in the Torrance Marriott Hotel.

More than 500 members and friends gathered for the event which featured talks by Golden Globe Award-winning filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad and Dr. Imad Tabry. The stars of the evening, however, were two young amputees here to receive surgery. They are Hussein Yasser, who was blinded and lost an arm when U.S. forces shelled his home in Najaf, Iraq in 2004, and Mutassam Abu Karsh, who lost a hand and a leg in an Israeli artillery attack on Jebalya in Gaza.

Yasser, 11, proudly explained that he learned English while living in an American home in Phoenix for the past eight months. He doesn’t talk about the pain he’s endured since a shell landed on his house, killing his mother, nor does he seem fearful of the surgeries and therapy that lie ahead. So far, he’s received a corneal transplant in one eye and will soon be fitted with an artificial limb.

Would he like to stay in the U.S.?


	Dr. Imad Tabry and 11-year-old Hussein Yasser from Najaf, Iraq (Staff photo S. Twair).

“Yes,” Hussein replies enthusiastically. Unfortunately, that isn’t in the cards. All children receiving medical care in the U.S. through PCRF are obligated to return home when their treatment is completed.

“PCRF helps children who have been violently affected by war,” explained chapter president Lily Karam. “Thousands have been robbed of their childhood and face bleak situations, yet they handle themselves with grace and dignity. They come to us with little hope, and they leave with smiles.”

Dr. Tabry, a cardiac surgeon at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, FL, has made nine medical missions to Palestine. He was born in Haifa in 1946 but his ophthalmologist father fled with his family to Lebanon in 1948. He first learned of PCRF in January 2000, when a Jewish plastic surgeon who was working on a cleft lip patient from Ein El Helweh asked him if he would perform heart surgery on Palestinian children.

Would he!

Nine months later, Dr. Tabry was on his way to Gaza with a volunteer cardiac surgical team. One 200-bed hospital in Khan Younis serves Gaza’s 1.4 million people. And while visiting medical teams can work miracles, many foreign surgeons are being denied visas due to new Israeli restrictions.

“The corridor [of passage from Israel to Gaza and the West Bank] that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised hasn’t developed,” Dr. Tabry pointed out.

The heart specialist discussed the stress and trauma of parents with desperately ill children who must pass through checkpoints where Israeli soldiers can hold them up past their appointed surgery time.

The PCRF sends medical teams to the West Bank and Gaza, has established a pediatric cardiac intensive care unit at Makassaed Hospital in East Jerusalem, and is sending aid to Lebanese who were made refugees after Israel’s 34-day blitz of that country this past summer. For more information on PCRF, visit <http://www.pcrf.net>.

“Taxi to al-Jannah”


TOP: “Taxi to al-Jannah” lead actor Mueen Jahan (l) and playwright Mark Sickman. ABOVE: CAIR speakers Imam Siraj Wahhaj (l) and Dr. Sulayman Nyang (Staff photos S. Twair).

With all the bad news emanating from the Middle East, it’s been a pleasure for Muslims to enjoy the light-hearted play “Taxi to al-Jannah,” which enjoyed a six-week run at Hollywood’s Fountain Theatre.

Playwright Mark Sickman developed the script in the 1990s, when he concluded the good-natured Muslims he met were a far cry from the demented terrorists he viewed on TV and in films. Why not, he asked himself, write a play that portrayed Muslims who share the same humor and aspirations as other Americans?

All details were carefully reviewed by Sheikh Ahmed Dewidar of the Islamic Society of Mid-Manhattan and Syrian academic Ghazi Khankan. Sickman named his lead character Nasrudeen in honor of the Sufi sage Mulla Nasrudin, who, in Middle Eastern folklore, humbles kings and challenges the status quo with his common sense.

Nasrudeen (Mueen Jahan) is a Muslim cab driver in a large American city who dreams of converting an abandoned storefront Baptist church into a small mosque. He hopes to buy the empty albeit dilapidated building from its African-American preacher, Reverend Johnson (Archie Lee Simpson).

Even though his father-in-law Nabeel (Avner Garbi) has nothing but disdain for Nasrudeen, he agrees to help pay for the storefront when Nasarudeen promises to make his in-law the imam when the crumbling structure is remodeled into a glorious Islamic house of worship.

The plot thickens as a building inspector, Miss Collins-Corruthers (Sloan Robinson), tells Nasrudeen he must bring all the failed building codes up to par or the city will condemn it in 20 days. At this juncture, Nasrudeen’s father-in-law withdraws his financial assistance and the hapless Arab immigrant has no choice but to borrow $25,000 on his taxi permit.

Nasrudeen begins to work 14-hour days and has no time to hear his wife, Rabaab (Anna Khaja), tell him their son is being bullied at school because he is an Arab. Things hit rock bottom when Nasrudeen’s wife and son leave his home to live with her father and a crooked contractor takes off with the money Nasrudeen had paid him.

Playwright Sickman invested more than five years developing “Taxi to al-Jannah.” A stage reading was scheduled in Manhattan for Sept. 14, 2001. On Sept. 12, it was cancelled.

Sickman wasn’t about to be defeated, however. He entered the script in competitions and it won first place in the Xenia National playwriting contest, and the silver medal in the University of Tampa’s Pinter Prize. It took nearly four years before Americans were ready to view a comedy about Muslim Americans, but in January 2005 ”Taxi” opened off-Broadway at the Queen’s Theatre in the Park in Long Island, and in February at Manhattan’s 59E59.

There’s already a buzz that “Taxi’s” characters could be the basis for the first-ever American TV sitcom with a Muslim theme.

CAIR Marks 10th Year

Nearly 1,000 friends and members of the Southern California Council on American Islamic Relations gathered Nov. 18 in the Anaheim Hilton Hotel to celebrate the organization’s 10th anniversary.

Keynote speaker Dr. Sulayman Nyang discussed the importance of institution building. Noting that the family is human society’s oldest institution, the Howard University professor of African Studies described the U.S. as a nation of joiners in which volunteerism thrives.

Explaining that protective institutions are one stage of institution building, Dr. Nyang pointed out that Arab Americans have their Anti-Discrimination Committee, Jews have the Anti-Defamation League, African Americans have the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People—and Muslims have CAIR.

Imam Siraj Wahhaj of the Brooklyn Masjid al-Taqwa noted there were 1,192 registered hate crimes against Muslims in 2005 and that CAIR is doing its part to address this threat against followers of Islam.

In 1947, the imam said, Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play on an integrated baseball team. Today, an expressway out of New York’s La Guardia Airport is named for the legendary athlete. The imam said Muslims should take heart that the first African-American Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, was elected Nov. 7.

Mohammad Amer of “Allah Made Me Funny” brought down the house with his stand-up comedy, as a total of $430,000 was raised for the forthcoming year.

L.A. Maronites Mourn Pierre Gemayel

More than 400 mourners gathered Nov. 26 for a Mass and memorial at Our Lady of Lebanon Church in Los Angeles in memory of Lebanon’s Minister of Industry Pierre Amine Gemayel. Gemayel, 34, was assassinated Nov. 22 in Beirut by unknown gunmen.

The Rev. Father Abdullah Zaydan officiated at the Mass, and Lebanese Consul General Charbel Wehbe opened the memorial service. Speakers included representatives of al-Mustaqbal Movement, the Phalangist Party, Lebanese Forces, Socialist Progressive Party and International Lebanese Cultural League.

MESTO Performs Amman in L.A.

Even though Israel’s July 12 invasion of Lebanon forced the cancellation of the Multi-Ethnic Star Orchestra’s July 30 and 31 performances in Jerash and Amman, Jordan, Dr. Nabil Azzam led his 36-piece group in a “Jerash in Hollywood” concert Nov. 5 at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall.

Under the sponsorship of Jordan’s Queen Noor and Dr. Raymond Jallow, MESTO performed the full program it had prepared for the festivals in Jordan. The highlight was the world premiere of “Amman,” composed by Dr. Azzam, with lyrics by Henri Zoghaib, and sung by Tunisian singer Zahra al-Trougi.

The international theme featured five signature pieces of Egyptian composer Mohammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab, a special performance by Jordanian-American Musa Nasser on the bagpipes, and a haunting performance of Azerbaijani composer Tofiq Guliyev’s “Sanada Ghalmaz” by tar virtuoso Mohammad Omranifar.

Diplomats on hand for the unique concert included Jordanian Consul General Kamal Ayoub, Egyptian Consul General Abdulrahman Salahaddin and Lebanese Consul General Ambassador Charbel Wehbi.

Iraq Play at REDCAT

Three hours before Elia Arce’s play about the Iraq war, “The Fifth Commandment,” was to open at REDCAT in the Disney Concert Hall complex, we received a call asking for an Arabic speaker to recite names of fallen Iraqis during the first moments of the play.

Samir Twair agreed to answer Los Angeles producer Debra Winski’s SOS call, and a few hours later we arrived at the downtown landmark theater. The three-day run of “The Fifth Commandment” was part of the International Latino Theatre Festival of Los Angeles. Its title reflects military combatants’ dilemma with the biblical injunction, “Thou shalt not kill.”

Costa Rican-American playwright Arce interacted for three years with men training at the 29 Palms Marine Corps base, and much of her play consists of monologues by these troops and the women who date them.

“After meeting some of the Marines, I wanted to know who these people were, as well as understand why they had done and continue to do what they do today,” Arce told the Washington Report.

“In the process, I found young people running from abusive family situations, wanting to gain an education, health care, security and a regular paycheck. So they joined the military wanting to protect themselves, mostly,” she explained. “But once they joined, they discovered what they had imagined to be was far from it, and they became disillusioned—broken in a sense—deeply regretting their decision.”

In addition to Arce, who not only directs but plays roles of women involved with Marines, the actors include two Iraq War veterans, Cameron White and Mathew Howard.

The most powerful performance in the Los Angeles run was by Nadia McCaffrey, mother of Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey, the first soldier in his 579th National Guard unit from Tracy, CA to die in Iraq. Sitting in front of a screen with a huge photo of her son, McCaffrey states: “When Patrick came home in a coffin, the media contacted me. They asked if I wanted the media to cover it. I knew it was forbidden to take photos of coffins with flags on them. But I thought about it and said, ‘Yes.’”

“The Fifth Commandment” is scheduled to play in theaters throughout the U.S., so we encourage anyone who receives a call to volunteer to read aloud names of Iraqi fatalities to agree to do so. Winski told the Washington Report that she has had difficulty recruiting Arabic speakers everywhere this experimental work appears.

Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.