A Sunni walked into a group full of Shias last month and asked for their blood.
It wasn’t ISIS, it wasn’t sectarian aggression. It was a father in a hospital whose little boy needed a blood transfusion—and quickly.
The boy, Aland (whose story we’ll share with you soon), had traveled from his hometown in the north to our Nasiriyah program in the south, desperately seeking a lifesaving heart surgery—and he got it. But during the surgery, he also lost a lot of blood.
He needed more. So his father, a Sunni Kurd, walked onto the street outside—which brimmed with Shia Arab families—and asked if they would help save his son.
Not long after, Aland had ‘enemy’ blood running through his veins.
Typically, only family members give blood to each other in Iraq. So, to Aland’s father, it was as though these people—who were thought to be enemies—raised their hands and said, “I’m family.”
You make encounters like this possible each time you donate toward a child’s lifesaving surgery—thank you. Click here to give so more little boys like Aland can discover family amongst their enemies—and what life is like with a healthy heart.