I looked at the screen
and there was Mustafa coming across the sand
on his crutches.
I just started screaming.
Like, that's Mustafa! He's actually alive!
[news chatter]
What happened over the weekend is, ISIS lost Fallujah.
Now to Iraq, in an exclusive look at
the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
Special correspondent Jane Arraf reports.
This is just a couple of hours after Iraqi security forces
have declared Fallujah completely liberated.
Last year I was reporting from Fallujah
when I met a boy named Mustafa Ahmed.
When I heard his story I thought he'd beenforgotten.
Mustafa was lucky to have survived,
but he lost his leg.
And if you're poor and you need
serious medical care in Fallujah, being wounded
is just the start of your problems.
They'd nearly given up.
But there's an American group looking for Iraqi children
who had been wounded by the U.S. in the war.
The group brought Mustafa and his dad to Portland, Ore.
When Mustafa arrived, both of his kidneys were failing.
He would not be alive today, for sure,
had he not come here.
I can say that with certainty.
I watched some pretty horrible moments with him, in,
that first time he was in the emergency room.
The pain and him asking his father,
"Why didn't you just let me die when the bombs fell?"
As Ahmed said all of the time,
"Mustafa is one of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
whose lives will never be the same."
There's no doubt Mustafa envisioned himself
as a soccer player.
And just watching his athleticism
as a very coordinated 5-year-old,
I have no doubt that he would have been an athlete.
And hopefully he still will be.
But I think everybody felt really compelled by his story
and understood this was just a tragedy of our making.
His condition improved a lot in Portland.
Eventually, he and his father went back to Iraq.
The group tried to stay in touch.
I recall phone calls with them,
you know, every few months maybe for about a year.
Maybe like three or four phone calls.
And then it became impossible.
And we'd keep trying and nothing.
And so, of course, our worst fear was that
he and the family hadn't survived.
Fallujah was under ISIS control for more than two years
and for most people there was no Internet, no phone.
When Mustafa talked about
having been to the U.S.for medical treatment
I thought people had forgotten about him.
That all changed when my PBS news story
aired on July 1.
My husband, Ned, and I were sitting out back.
It was right around dinnertime and Mary Lynn called
and said, "You are not going to believe this."
We were so excited we immediately
pulled the computer out and saw the Fallujah story.
And then there was this young boy, and I think,
I said to Ned, "Is that Mustafa?"
When Mustafa remembers Portland
he remembers having his own bedroom –
almost as if it was this unimaginable luxury.
In Fallujah his whole family shares one room.
He misses the friends he made in Portland.
He wants to go back.
Maxine and the rest of the group
are trying to get him a visa for more treatment.
It was very difficult to see the conditions
that he and his family were in then.
I mean, it was just hard to imagine
how anybody could live like that.
Much less Mustafa, who had his own
personal medical needs.
So yes, we really, really want to bring
he and his mom here.
On his first day of school in Fallujah this fall
Mustafa walked an hour there and an hour back
on crutches.
His family doesn't have the money for transportation.
Mustafa is determined to make a future for himself
no matter where that is.