Helen Ubinas: Eagle Scout is no prisoner of war

MOHAMMED Al-Jumaili is an all-American teenager by way of war-torn Fallujah, Iraq.

The cheerful, focused 18-year-old keeps mounds of Boy Scout awards in his bedroom dresser and prosthetic limbs in his closet.

"I used to have more," he explained as he struggled to dig the prosthetics out the other day in the Glenside apartment he shares with his mother.

He found three. Two were his, plastic legs of varying quality that replaced a right leg that was half blown off from a car-bomb explosion when he was 12.

Another was an arm that looked as though it was removed from a slightly oversize doll. It belonged to a 9-year-old Iraqi boy who lost an eye, his right arm and left leg when he kicked a bottle that turned out to be a bomb.

The young boy and his family stayed with Al-Jumaili and his mother, Jinan, while he was fitted for new prosthetics at Shriners Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.

Shriners is also where Al-Jumaili has been treated since he came to the United States in 2007, and where he's become a bit of a rock star.

No surprise. Among the Abington High School senior's dizzying list of accomplishments and activities, Al-Jumaili wrestles, plays tennis, is a member of the robotics team and, like every other teenager, spends a lot of time staring at his cellphone.

He also recently became the first known Iraqi war refugee and amputee to become an Eagle Scout - a rank that only about 2 to 4 percent of Boy Scouts reach.

"It was hard," he says, going over his stash of merit badges - way more than the 21 required to be an Eagle Scout. "But it was very important to me."

As proud as Al-Jumaili is of his accomplishments since coming to the U.S. - including speaking fluent English - there's a bubbling impatience in him, and a desire to talk about the needs of others.

"I have a lot of friends, kids I went to school with, kids I know, who lost their arms and legs because of the war," he said. "I want to help them get help like I got."

The Iraqi Ministry of Health estimates that Iraq has more than 50,000 amputees, many of them children. At Shriners, 10 percent of their prosthetics are for international children, and half of those are from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al-Jumaili recalls the day he lost his leg in gruesome detail.

American soldiers were taking pictures and giving candy to Al-Jumaili and his cousins while they played outside his home. His mother was inside cooking him a belated birthday dinner.

Out of nowhere, a speeding car barreled toward the group. And then the explosion, a burst of darkness before screams and blood and immeasurable carnage. Al-Jumaili does not know how many died, except that among the dead was his 7-year-old cousin, Hajer.

"I saw my cousin, half of her face was gone," he said.

At a Baghdad hospital, Al-Jumaili's mother spoke to a doctor out of earshot of her son, or so she thought. She begged him to continue to let her pray over her son's leg.

"Give me more time to pray," she recalled asking the doctor. "Maybe God will help me."

Al-Jumaili called to his mother. "Mom, don't worry. If they have to cut my leg, let them."

CNN later did a story about a wheelchair bound Al-Jumaili headed to his nearby bombed-out school to take an exam. Shortly after, the Global Medical Relief Fund brought him and his mother to Shriners for surgery, physical therapy and prosthesis fittings.

They returned to Iraq after months in the hospital. But they were forced to seek asylum in the U.S. after their lives were threatened for speaking kindly about the Americans who helped them.

It was while living with the Wyndmoor, Montgomery County, family of Charles Affel - arranged through Hosts for Hospitals - that Al-Jumaili first learned about Boy Scouts, and joined Troop 177.

For his Eagle Scout project, Al-Jumaili and fellow Scouts tore down 65 feet of fencing around St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill, and improved the grounds to prevent storm water runoff.

Although the Al-Jumailis are devout Sunni Muslim, the church, like the Boy Scouts, has become something of a second home for them.

They've both received green cards, and Al-Jumaili - who is now an assistant Scout master - is busy working toward his next goal: college.

He misses, and worries about, his father and siblings in Iraq, especially since so many of his relatives have been killed. But, he said, his future is in America.

"I am 100 percent American," he says. "I've even started dreaming in English."

Phone: 215-854-5943

On Twitter: @NotesFromHel