At homecoming, a gift elicits wonder

(Last of four parts)

A half-hour before the C-17 jet was to touch down in Iraq, the Mississippi Air National Guard crew strapped on body armor and then moved to help Rakan Hassan, the boy they were flying home, put on his.

The vest and helmet weren't just ludicrously big for the wiry 12-year-old; they were a mystery to him.

''What's this?" Rakan asked.

''This is to keep you safe," crewman Bobby Evans told him. ''You need to put it on."

''Why?" Rakan asked. ''Why?"

Despite his own story -- wounded by US soldiers in an accidental shooting that left his parents dead -- Rakan seemed the only one on board who saw no reason to fear a night landing in his native land.

US intelligence officials say sectarian violence in Iraq could lead to civil war. A18.

Until that point, Rakan's long return journey had been remarkably relaxed. From Boston, where he'd been hospitalized, to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and now into Iraqi airspace, the atmosphere was convivial. But that all changed as the lights inside the C-17 dimmed and the huge plane began a sudden, steep descent.

The jolting dips in altitude, meant to evade hostile fire, elicited shrieks of delight from Rakan, who greeted each ear-popping drop like a kid on a roller coaster. In just a matter of seconds, the huge jet was on the ground, landing with a bump.

''Iraq!" Rakan said, rolling the r, half his face covered by the three-sizes-too-big helmet.

He had come home.

But to what?

When he left Boston on the first leg of his journey home on Jan. 25, Rakan was wearing a Red Sox wool hat. By the time he boarded the C-17 jet at Andrews 12 hours later, he had ditched it for a cap with Spider-Man on it.

''Too many people talking," he sighed, tired of the attention lavished on him by citizens of Red Sox nation, from maintenance men at Logan International Airport to Air Force personnel at Andrews. Despite the best efforts of his physician, Dr. Laurence Ronan, to convince Rakan of the virtues of America's pastime, Rakan had maintained a yawning disinterest in baseball.

Five months earlier, when Rakan was airlifted from Iraq for treatment at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, he had to be carried aboard, his legs apparently paralyzed by the bullet that had clipped his spine. Silent and serious, he was plainly in awe of the aircraft and his entourage.

Now, as his litter was slotted into the metal racks that transform the jet into a flying hospital ward, he was chewing gum, his thumbs flailing away at a Game Boy. He weighed 58 pounds, almost 10 more than when he left Iraq. He had grown 2 inches. His wheelchair was packed away. All he needed was his crutches, and sometimes he didn't need them.

Rakan was allowed to take three duffel bags back home. One was full of his medical supplies. Another held toys, mostly gifts for his siblings and cousins.

A third bag, which Rakan also helped pack, was marked ''essentials," and was supposed to carry clothing and medicine. When Ronan unzipped the bag, a box of Lucky Charms peeked out.

''Hey," Ronan said, straightening up, pointing down at the cereal. ''What's with these?"

Rakan craned his neck out and looked down at the duffel bag. He shrugged and smiled.

''They're magically delicious," Rakan said, offering the cereal's advertising slogan as his excuse.

During the 20 weeks his Boston medical team had worked to get him walking again, bits and pieces of American culture had seeped in.

Ronan, his own Red Sox cap firmly in place, stood to the side, eyeing his charge. After months of ambivalence, Ronan was at peace with his decision to return Rakan to Iraq. If some were unsure of the ethics of returning a 12-year-old boy to a war zone, Ronan was certain that it would be wrong to deny Rakan's fervent wish to be reunited with his brother and sisters in Iraq.

''He seems more reflective the last few days," Ronan said, raising his voice over the thunder of the engines.

Beyond Rakan's obvious excitement at going home, Ronan sensed some anxiety. ''Sometimes he acts 12 going on 20, and sometimes he acts 12 going on 6."

Realizing that people were talking about him, Rakan put his Game Boy down and stuck his tongue out.

He said he was hungry for a snack, but wouldn't open the Lucky Charms or the box of Fruit Loops he had also packed. He was saving them for his baby brother, Muhammed.

After an eight-hour flight to Germany, there was a required 24-hour layover. Rakan was taken to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a US military hospital which treats US soldiers wounded in Iraq, and where Ronan had first met and taken custody of Rakan in September.

Rakan had sometimes fought with his caregivers in Boston -- most of them women -- often refusing their requests that he use a catheter to urinate. But when Major Edwin Jeske, a nurse at Landstuhl, told him to empty his bladder by pressing his abdomen, Rakan went to a urinal and did as he was told.

For all the emphasis on getting Rakan up and walking, the most immediate and lasting threat to his health would be urinary tract infections. His newfound ability to manually trigger his bladder reflex reduces his risk of infection, and should dramatically improve his quality of life.

Inside a coffee shop at the hospital, Ronan bought Rakan a chicken sandwich. After a few bites, Rakan's attention was drawn to a big-screen TV in one corner. Tuned to the Armed Forces Network, the TV was showing cartoons, and Rakan used his crutches to amble over, taking a seat directly in front of the screen. Moments later, the cartoon was interrupted by a video feed from Washington, where President Bush was holding a press conference. When Bush's image came on screen, Rakan turned back and made a face.

Back in his room, Rakan played with a remote control toy Humvee that one of the soldiers brought in for him, and spoke with Ronan, who was slumped in a chair next to the boy's bed.

''He just told me he'd never come back to Boston," Ronan said. ''Not even to visit."

Rakan stopped playing with the Humvee. He looked up at Ronan. He understood what the doctor had said, and he didn't dispute it. Neither did he smile. Or explain why he was so adamant on this point.

For all the kindness and generosity shown to Rakan by Americans, there was in him a reservoir of bitterness over what had happened to him and his family. He was thankful for the help he had gotten from his doctors and therapists, and often said so. But there were also harder feelings that, in part because of language barriers, his caregivers couldn't get at, and which Rakan guarded with vague answers or no answers at all.

Part of his heart was off-limits. No one quite knew what Rakan really felt.

The next morning, Rakan said he was done with beds and litters and stretchers. For the five-hour flight to Mosul, he would sit in a jump seat, like everybody else.

Nap Bryan, who used to fly fighter jets for the Air Force and now flies commercial jets for American Airlines, piloted the C-17 for the Mississippi Air National Guard. Shortly after takeoff, Bryan turned the controls over to his co-pilot and ambled over to Rakan.

''You wanna ride up front, with me?" Bryan asked, in a soft drawl.

Moments later, Rakan was in the cockpit, sitting in a chair behind Bryan, looking down from 6 miles high. The tips of the Alps peeked through the clouds. Bryan and Rakan talked to each other over headphones.

''What's Alps?" Rakan asked.

Rakan reluctantly returned to his seat for landing. After the plane had touched down in Mosul, Rakan's wheelchair was unpacked, as it would be the fastest way to get him from the tarmac into the hospital, a few hundred yards away. As the rear flap on the C-17 lowered, Ronan stood in back of the wheelchair, gripping its handles. Two crewmen, Evans and Mike Hall, took their positions, one in front, the other behind Ronan and Rakan. Other crew members surrounded the boy: if there was sniper fire, or shrapnel from a mortar, they would take the hit.

As Ronan pushed the wheelchair into the dull, eerie light at the bottom of the ramp, Colonel James Polo, commander of the 47th Combat Support Hospital, emerged from the darkness. Polo, a child psychiatrist, knelt on the tarmac and pushed his face within inches of Rakan's.

''You're safe," Polo told him. ''And you're home."

Polo did not tell Rakan that, about an hour before the plane touched down, two mortar shells had exploded on the tarmac, tearing holes just yards from where Rakan's wheelchair rested.

Inside the hospital, Nathir Bashir Ali, 50, who is married to Rakan's 25-year-old sister, Intisar, waited patiently with his other wife, Sabah, and their 17-month-old daughter, Kadega. Bashir Ali bent down to embrace Rakan. Sabah did the same.

In Bashir Ali's presence, the silly, sometimes mischievous Rakan disappeared, replaced by a boy who in an instant seemed older, deferential, mature.

After the formal greetings, Rakan told his brother-in-law he had something to show him.

Rakan climbed out of his wheelchair and walked across the room on his crutches. Then he turned around and walked back, banging the crutches together over his head, triumphantly.

A dignified, soft-spoken man, Bashir Ali kept his hands folded in front. But his eyes widened, in disbelief, as he watched Rakan walk.

''This is a miracle," he said, bowing his head. ''There is no other word for this. This is a miracle."

He turned to Ronan, and repeatedly placed his right hand over his heart, a sign of thanks.

His wife Sabah stepped back. She shook her head, side to side, slowly, as if amazed, and allowed herself a smile.

Habeel Al Jovany, a translator who worked in the hospital and had kept Rakan company during the 45 days Rakan had spent there last summer, rubbed his eyes with clenched fists when Rakan got out of his wheelchair.

He rushed to Rakan, and hugged him tightly.

''You can walk!" he cried.

''Yes," Rakan replied, laughing.

''He was crooked, like a pretzel," Al Jovany said, sitting on the floor to demonstrate what Rakan had looked like just six months ago.

Rakan was led to a bed to spend the night in the hospital's open ward. The scene there seemed almost a tableau of the conflict -- its combatants, its bystanders, and its grievous price.

Less than 15 feet away, to the left of Rakan's bed, lay a wounded teenager who US soldiers said was an insurgent. He was hidden behind a curtain so that Rakan couldn't see him. An armed guard sat discreetly to the side. Two other suspected insurgents, much older, and also shielded behind curtains, were in beds nearby.

Directly across from Rakan's bed was Samah Arajy, a 12-year-old girl who had been wounded in a crossfire between US troops and insurgents. She sat up and smiled sweetly at Rakan, who nodded almost imperceptibly at her. Next to the little girl was a sheik who had been wounded by gunfire. Told of Rakan's circumstances, the sheik pulled $100 from his wallet and handed it to his 21-year-old son, who walked over and gave it to Rakan.

Rakan smiled at the sheik and nodded in respect. Of the dozen patients in the ward, only a couple were US soldiers.

''About 80 percent of our patients are Iraqis," Polo explained. ''There were some boys from Rakan's hometown, Tal Afar, playing soccer last week. They kicked a metal contraption that turned out to be a buried mine. Two of the kids were killed. Two others, cousins, were brought to us. One was 8. The other was 6. One boy lost his left arm. One boy lost his leg."

Jim Polo nodded, watching Rakan, the new eminence on the ward, receive visitors.

''Rakan is one of many," Polo said. ''He was the one in a hundred thousand who got what he needed medically."

Around midnight, Rakan fell asleep watching ''Spider-Man" on a portable DVD player.

As dawn broke, Bashir Ali sat in a chair next to Rakan's bed, watching him sleep.

''I stayed up, all night," he said. ''How can he walk? I met with the best doctors in Mosul. They said, 'Don't make yourself tired. There's nothing that can be done.' They said he would never walk again. And now . . ."

He stretched his right arm out, over the sleeping boy, as if to bless him.

''I will treat him as my son," he said, softly, almost to himself. ''He is my son now."

In Iraqi society, Bashir Ali is a man of substance and responsibility. He is in charge of 100 men who provide security for the museums and antiquities in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city. He earns about $500 a month, nearly twice as much as a doctor, but the money has to go a long way: he has nine children with Sabah; he has two children with Intisar and a third on the way; he has also taken in Rakan's five unmarried siblings. He keeps two houses, a wife in each of them.

Ronan and Polo spent hours explaining to Bashir Ali what Rakan's family has to do to keep him healthy. They had arranged for Rakan to see Iraqi doctors and therapists on a regular basis. Rakan needs to take eight medications, twice a day.

''I'd like to lose the wheelchair," Ronan said. ''I need to get the family to minimize the chair, to make sure that he walks every day, that he takes his medicine every day. He has to wear his leg brace. He has to pee every four to six hours."

Ronan was impressed by Bashir Ali, by the questions he asked, and by the ones he didn't.

''He never once asked for money," said Ronan. ''All he did was express gratefulness."

As Rakan packed up his things, Ronan went digging through one of Rakan's duffel bags, looking for the $400 that Himmet and Hesna Taskomur, a Turkish couple from Cambridge, had given Rakan when he left. Ronan wanted to give it to Bashir Ali, and panicked when he couldn't find it. Rakan calmed the doctor with a wave of his arm, and beckoned him close to explain.

Rakan had, the night before, given the money to his brother-in-law, thanking him for taking care of his brother and sisters.

''You did that?" Ronan asked him. ''On your own?"

Rakan nodded.

Ronan walked away, chuckling.

On the way to Bashir Ali's car in the parking lot across from the hospital, they had to wait as a heavily armored Army vehicle called a Stryker passed. Rakan eyed it briefly -- it was the kind of vehicle used by the soldiers who shot up Rakan's family, and in which he had been rushed to the hospital a year before.

Then, using his crutches, Rakan walked hurriedly, almost hopping, to the front passenger side of his uncle's Opel sedan. A bunch of plastic grapes hung from the rear-view mirror.

''I'll miss you," Ronan told him. ''I'm glad I met you."

They embraced.

Rakan climbed into the car, the same model his father used to drive. He waved, then pressed his right palm against the window and left it there.

And then he was gone.

Kevin Cullen can be reached at cullen@globe.com. Michele McDonald can be reached at mmcdonald@globe.com.