Thanks to Tanker for the link...
It took 14 surgeries, one of them lasting 11 hours, to repair the damage done to Sgt. Wasim Khan's right leg when a rocket-propelled grenade tore into his ammunition truck during a June battle in Iraq. Then there were two more surgeries to repair an eye. Khan, 27, still has marks on his arms and other parts of his body hit by shrapnel. But the worst damage was to his leg, where, Khan says, "It looked as though someone had spooned out a big chunk of it." That was repaired by doctors who took a muscle from his thigh, implanted it in the open wound and then covered it with a skin graft. Two skin grafts failed to work, but a third was successful.
Khan's ordeal isn't over. He is set to report back to the hospital in December for physical rehabilitation. Yesterday, Khan, who is a practicing Muslim and who prays five times a day on a small rug in the Richmond Hill apartment he shares with his cousin, Mohammed Nasim, stretched out on a couch, his wounded leg propped on a plump pillow. He showed me pictures taken at the hospital, including one with President George W. Bush and Bush's wife, Laura. "They were great," said Khan, who was born in Pakistan and arrived in America in 1997. "The president sat on my bed and shook hands with me and thanked me for fighting for the country and then he called me 'my fellow American.'"
Khan doesn't spend much time talking about the past and his horrific leg wound. "It is what it is," he said. But it's clear he is doing well and he has already put back the 27 pounds he lost during his four-month hospital stay. "I'm lucky to be alive," said Khan, who plans to march today in the Veteran's Day Parade along Fifth Avenue with soldiers from Fort Totten and a contingent of Marines. Khan has been in the Army for more than five years and still has two more years to go. He talks about signing on for another stint because he loves being in the Army and especially with the First Armored Division soldiers who were his tent mates. And he is proud now to be an American citizen, taking the oath at a ceremony in the hospital. "If you choose to live in a country, then you are obligated to defend it," he said. He has no sympathy for the suicide bombers. It is against the Muslim religion to commit suicide, he said. "It is a sin, and besides, anyone who is willing to blow himself up doesn't have any respect for himself or for anyone else," he added.
Khan grew up in a small town called Gilgit, close to the Chinese border. He was one of a large family of six brothers and two sisters. His father is an administrator at a college in Pakistan, and he had to get his parent's permission to leave for America. So it's all about the future these days for this introspective soldier. He has a fiancee in Pakistan and he plans marry her after she finishes college. Later this month, Khan's cousin Nasim is throwing him a welcome home party with "a lot of friends" - just before Khan leaves for another but less painful stay at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
| Just a reminder they're not all bad guys. But I'll bet the family reads the Friday Times a lot more than they read the Balochistan Post. |
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