Otherness

Hey folks,
So... I'm going to tell you ladies and gentlemen about an article I read about a baby born during the Iraqi war. This little girl was and is known as Iraq's miracle baby. She was born with a spinal tumor and one night when the American Soldiers went through homes to ask families questions, this young girls brave grandmother showed her to them. This now young girl is named Noor. After she was shown to the soilders, they went back to camp to see if there wasn't something that could be done for her. That day, God must have been looking out for this family because after talking with people from the camp hospital, Noor was able to go to America and have surgery to remove the tumor. Although the tumor has paralyzed her and she is left with Spina Bifida, she is a survivor.
On a side note, I don't know how she went from living in America to living in Iraq. One struggle she faces is being treated differently because of her disability. She has to take a bus a long way only because there are two schools in all of Iraq that will have children with disabilities. This country is still not used to differences in people and although America is further along, are we really that different? After the news spread that the great and mighty America had given this little girl a second chance at life, it eventually died out and praise stopped coming, and with this so did the support America was giving Noor. A few years later after her surgery, the doctors stopped calling to ask how she was and lost touch. They also stopped sending her cathiders so now she is forced to use them multiple times and suffers from urinary tract infections. Were the American people only there for Noor because they knew they would receive praise from the Iraqi people?
After reading this article, I was first off really mad that the American's would take on a responsibility and then just stop. They should be trying to advocate for children with disabilities and help build schools for these children who deserve an education.
I actually wanted to talk about this article because it relates a lot to Notre Dame de Paris or otherwise known as the hunchback of Notre Dame. This book has a main theme of otherness and how being different was viewed. One of the main characters is a hunchback named Quasimodo... when imagining him, don't think of the slightly handsome hunchback from the Disney movie. This man is grotesque in every way imaginable. He has one eye and he's deaf and has a large nasty boil above his one eye. Anyway back to my point, people don't accept otherness as much as one would hope. Like Noor, when Quasimodo was a baby his mother didn't want him because he was different and he was given up. Luckly for Noor, her grandparents were willing to take her in. For Quasimodo, he was stared at and called a demon and everyone wanted to burn him except one person who was an archdeacon.
For both Noor and Quasimodo life in the place where they live has been hard. I haven't gotten to the end of the book, but I hope it gets better for Quasimodo and I especially hope things get better for Noor who is no fictional character.