SCARBOROUGH (March 3, 2009): Harrison Tice loves to roller skate. He does it a few times a week playing street hockey in his Scarborough neighborhood. Now the 10-year-old is taking his love for his pastime and turning it into a way to help a young lady he calls “one special person.”

Since late January, Harrison has been planning a fundraiser to help pay medical expenses for Noora Afif Abdulhameed, a 7-year-old Iraqi girl injured in the fighting in Iraq in 2006. She has been in Portland since last summer, receiving medical treatment for head injuries.

Harrison with Noora. (Photo by Elizabeth Campbell)

“I just wanted to help her,” Harrison said. “I understand that I am pretty lucky to live here and that other kids aren’t as lucky. I thought this would be a good way to give back.”

Harrison, along with Happy Wheels in Portland, will host two hours of skating at the rink on March 14. All proceeds will go to Noora’s cause and skate rentals are free during the event.

“I like to skate and I figured this is something others might want to do as well,” Harrison said.

Harrison learned about Noora’s plight after studying and reporting on the war in Iraq as part of a cultural studies project in his fifth-grade class at Breakwater School in Portland.

While doing research, he came across Noora’s story in a newspaper and decided to take his project a step further and raise money for her, said his mother, Elizabeth Campbell.

In October 2006, Noora, who was 5 at the time, was shot in the head by U.S. snipers. According to the advocacy Web site www.nomorevictims.org, Noora’s medical records show she had sustained an explosive bullet injury to her head that smashed skull bones and ruptured her cerebral membrane.

She underwent several neurological surgeries in Iraq, but members of nomorevictims.org brought her to Portland so she could undergo more surgery to repair her skull.

Harrison met Noora in February during school vacation. The visit, he said, strengthened his desire to help.

“In Iraq she didn’t always have electricity or clean water and that made me sad,” Harrison said. “I had fun getting to meet her and I can’t believe how well she speaks English.”

Harrison sought his mother’s help in his quest to aid Noora.

“He came to me and said he wanted to do this,” Campbell said. “I always knew he was a caring kid, but this isn’t something you really expect to come from a 10-year-old.”

Initially, Harrison thought he would raise some money through a bottle drive. Then, with his mom’s help, he began calling Greater Portland businesses to see if they would be interested in hosting an event to defray costs of Noora’s medical care.

Many businesses were interested in an arrangement where 25 percent of the proceeds would go to Noora’s cause.

That was good, but Harrison had another idea. He decided to call Happy Wheels in Portland, one of his favorite places to skate. He then got what he described as some of the best news of his life.

“They told me they would help and that they would donate all of the money from the event to Noora,” he said.

And so, on Saturday, March 14, Happy Wheels is going to do just that, manager Dan Dyer said. The fundraiser will go from 5:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. and admission is $4.50.

“We couldn’t believe they were donating all 100 percent of those proceeds to this cause,” Campbell said. “We were shocked.”

Dyer said Happy Wheels owner Paul White believes in fundraising causes that help children like Noora. To him, hosting the event was a no-brainer, Dyer said.

“We are just glad we can help,” Dyer said. “Paul White is big into giving back and we felt this one of the best ways we could do that.”

Harrison said he doesn’t have any monetary goal for the fundraiser, but said he hopes at least a few people will show up.

“Not everybody can be there and not everybody can skate,” Harrison said. “This allows them to still give if they want to.”

Noora is currently staying at the Ronald McDonald House in Portland and is scheduled for more surgery, Campbell said.

If people don’t skate or can’t make the event, they can still donate money to Noora’s cause by e-mailing Campbell at ecamp.main.rr.com, or calling her at 885-1373.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A U.S. missile strike in Iraq took Mustafa Ghazwan’s hearing nearly two years ago. On Tuesday, far from home, the 3-year-old’s wall of silence finally cracked.

In a University of California, San Francisco conference room, audiologist Colleen Polite switched on an electronic device that had been surgically inserted into Mustafa’s ear weeks ago.

After several tense minutes with no response, Mustafa stopped playing with his puzzle and buried his head in his father’s chest at the sound of Polite’s voice. Moments later, the sound of a clacking toy drew a stare and a frown from the otherwise cheery boy.

“I think he’s off to a fantastic start,” Polite said. “It was almost as if he read a script before he came in today.”

Mustafa was 2 years old and just learning to speak when a missile struck a neighbor’s home and left him deaf in June 2007.

He has not been able to talk since. His father, Ghazwan Al-Nadawi, said his son sometimes bangs his head in frustration over his inability to communicate.

No More Victims, a group that brings war-wounded Iraqi children to the U.S. for treatment, sponsored Mustafa’s trip to San Francisco in December. The next month, UCSF surgeons donating their services inserted a cochlear implant in his right ear.

The implant channels sound past damaged ears and directly into the brain. The device turns sounds transmitted through an external microphone mounted on the ear into electrical impulses that are fired into auditory nerves.

Over time, the area of the brain that manages hearing learns to translate those impulses. While the experience is not the same as normal hearing, patients can understand speech, use the telephone and listen to music, according to doctors.

Mustafa’s device even includes a jack that will allow him to directly connect his implant to an iPod.

Mustafa will need several months of observation to determine what sounds he is and is not hearing so the device can be fine-tuned, Polite said. He and his father, a professor of media studies at Baghdad University, expect to stay in San Francisco as the boy adjusts to the device.

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SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Great news for an Iraqi boy who had an operation at UCSF to restore his hearing. Doctors at UCSF just wrapped up his first hearing tests, and they were successful.

For 3-year-old Mustafa Ghazwan, the thrill of being seven floors up at UCSF is all about what he can see.

But in a few minutes, that will change to what he can hear.

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Here’s the rest of the Soapbox Radio interview with Cole Miller.

Cole Miller — Part 2.1: Cole Miller

Cole Miller — Part 2.2: Cole Miller

These interviews constitute the first in a two-part series with Cole Miller and the father of three-year-old Mustafa Ghazwan.

Ghazwan — Part 1.1: Ghazwan

Cole Miller — Part 1.2: Cole Miller

Doctors say that a three-year-old Iraqi boy is on the road to getting his hearing back after undergoing a successful surgery at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.On New Year’s Eve, young Mustafa Ghazwan was flown into San Francisco to receive treatment for his hearing loss after a U.S. missile struck near his home over a year ago.

In front of a large group of reporters, Ghazwan squirmed and sat uncomfortably as he wore a large bandage over his right ear where doctors had inserted a cochlear implant.

Now the next step is the boy’s rehabilitation which is expected to take several months to a year.

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Since then, the world has been a very quiet place for the 3-year-old boy. He has not heard the sounds of the war that has torn apart his country. He has also not heard the voices of his parents, the music from the living room stereo and the sound of the singing toys he was just beginning to play with.

On Friday, in a San Francisco operating room half a world away from the war, he took his first step back from the silence. In a 90-minute operation that was both routine and anything but, surgeons implanted an electronic cochlea inside the boy’s right ear.

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Ghazwan Al-Nadawi hasn’t heard his elder son speak in 19 months, since the day a missile attack in their native Baquba, Iraq, robbed the 3-year-old of his hearing and abruptly halted his nascent speech development.

But thanks to cochlear implant surgery performed on Friday by UCSF ear disorder specialist Lawrence Lustig, MD, the young boy, Mustafa Ghazwan, will soon be making up for lost time.

“He had started saying a few words [before his hearing loss], like ‘mama’ and ‘baba,’ but since then, we have used signs with our hands to communicate,” Al-Nadawi said through an interpreter on Friday, his hands shaking as he waited for Mustafa’s 90-minute surgery to end.

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