It was a November 2008 evening in Ramadi, Iraq, and the photograph — taken earlier that day — was haunting Howell, a Michigan National Guard physician’s assistant. Snapped as Howell’s unit tried to secure women and children from a potential suicide bomber attack, the photo showed a boy who had kept looking and looking at Howell from where he and his mother stood in the street earlier that day.

Two days later, Howell approached an Iraqi policeman with the photograph.

Do you know this boy?

Half a day later, with the help of the policeman, interpreters and a construction worker, a boy named Mohammed was led to Howell, joined by his mother and younger sister. The scars, suffered when Mohammed was badly burned in a house fire as a child, identified him from the photo.

Howell tried to speak to the boy’s mother using an interpreter when Mohammed spoke up in clear English.

“Mohammed, he just he looked up at me and he asked me if I would save him — he asked me if I would save him and take him to America, right out of the blue,” Howell said.

“So that’s when it all began.”

The arrival

Five months later, on an early April 2009 day, Mohammed stood at the front of a ceremony at the Michigan National Guard Headquarters. He wore a pair of shoes a couple of inches too big, but was smiling underneath a Spiderman hat covering the scars on his head.

Mohammed was being welcomed to Lansing ­— and to America — for the first time.

Howell had done everything he could to grant Mohammed’s request: Traveled more than 6,000 miles from Ramadi with the boy. Arranged for an MSU surgeon to perform a series of operations to reconstruct the nearly 30 percent of Mohammed’s body that was scarred. Found an Iraqi family that would take Mohammed in for a year.

He had made a promise to Mohammed’s mother to accompany the boy back to Iraq when surgeries were complete.

It’s been one year since Mohammed arrived. He has undergone four surgeries with MSU associate professor of surgery Edward Lanigan. He’s become an avid Tigers fan, seen Chicago and expanded his English skills.

And in less than two weeks, he and Howell will board a plane, headed back home.

Life in Iraq

If you talked to Mohammed now, he would seem like an ordinary American kid, Howell said. He dressed up as Batman and went trick-or-treating on Halloween. He went to soccer camp last summer. He’s been to the zoo, the circus, baseball games.

But the night that Howell and Mohammed left Ramadi was the first night Mohammed slept in a bed instead of a mat on the floor. The next day was the first day Mohammed took a shower.

“When he took a shower, he was watching where the water came from because he didn’t have indoor plumbing and he was wondering where all the water was going when it was going down the drain,” Howell said.

Mohammed’s family of seven was thrown into poverty when his father, a translator for the U.S. Marines Corps, was killed by insurgents. After that, the family was left to live on about $700 per year.

Mohammed was thin and sickly at about 62 pounds, Howell said. In a given day, he would eat an egg, some bread, some cheese — and that was it.

“In my mind, I felt like we owed them something,” Howell said. “They were in this circumstance because her husband took a chance and he made a commitment and he lost his life because of that.”

In Mohammed’s hometown, people leave home knowing they might not make it back that night, said his East Lansing host mother, Ziena Saeed, whose family is Iraqi. They’ve gotten used to it, she said, recalling a phone conversation between Mohammed and his brother in which Mohammed learned a friend of his had died. The friend was killed after an explosion impacted a car in which he had been riding, she said.

“He was a friend, somebody Mohammed knew, and Mohammed’s like, ‘Oh really, oh OK, well how’s blah blah blah doing,’” Saeed said. “And I’m like, ‘Was that a friend of yours? Oh my gosh, that must be hard.’”

Going home

In the past year, Mohammed has gained 26 pounds and is recovering from his surgeries. He’s decided his favorite sport is baseball, which he never knew how to play before coming to the U.S.

He’s watched as many Tigers games as he can and decided his Tiger is Miguel Cabrera.

“Because he’s a very good player,” Mohammed said.

He’s talked about going home, teaching his Iraqi friends how to play baseball and forming a team called the “Ramadi Tigers.”
Now 13 years old, Mohammed is soft-spoken, a natural athlete.

He’s run into trouble at school for little things — sneaking Halloween candy under his desk, not turning in his homework.
He spent weeks asking his teacher, Mellissa Reed, about Mileage Club — a program that tracks how far the students run during school — which began a few weeks ago at the Islamic school he attends.

“Mohammed’s favorite thing in the world is Mileage Club,” Reed said. “He will run for days out there if he can. I don’t think he even kept track of his laps.”

When asked about his surgeries, which have given him a normal hairline and skin grafts for his burns, Mohammed simply said, “I feel very good.”

In the past few days, as his flight back home approaches, Mohammed’s gotten quieter, Reed said. He doesn’t talk about leaving U.S.

“The only reason I knew his (departure) date was from the office,” she said. “He won’t share it with us. I made a comment of, ‘Oh it’s kind of getting close, huh?’ and he’s like, ‘Mhmm,’ and then that was it. So I haven’t pushed it.”

Saeed said she wishes she could see Mohammed’s mother’s reaction to the changes in him, knows her family will miss him and hopes he stays safe. Mohammed’s not the type to sit at home, but the one thing about him is he’s a “survivor,” she said.

“He was able to get Maj. Howell’s attention, he was able to accomplish coming here without his family,” Saeed said.

“He came here with optimism, and he came here like he’s going to stay here forever and I’m like, ‘Gosh, what child would do that, what child would be comfortable going through these surgeries without their family?’ He’s a survivor, he befriended the Marines, he learned English — he did a lot of things not every child would have the guts to do. And he was really young at the time. But he’s here today because of who he is.”

The second story in this series, which will be published next week, will look at Mohammed’s effect on Howell. The third story in this series, which will be published the following week, will look at their return to Iraq.

See previous stories about Mohammed, including reports about his first surgical procedure by an MSU surgeon and the near-completion of his operations..