Five-year-old Malak’s face lit up when she saw cartoon characters Goofy and Mini Mouse waiting for her on the quay as her father carried her off the ship that brought her to Malta from her besieged Libyan hometown.
Pinned to her pink and black spotted dress she wore a badge bearing the logo of the Libyan National Transitional Council and carried the council’s flag – a symbol of her condemnation of the Muammar Gaddafi government that fired a rocket into her Misurata home, ripping off her right leg and killing her younger brother and baby sister.
Malak had her leg amputated in a Misurata hospital that, however, could not provide her with a prosthetic limb small enough for a child. Her wish remained that of being able to run and play as she once did.
I Go Aid Foundation. an NGO set up by Libyans and Maltese, transported the family to Malta while the Global Medical Relief Fund is sponsoring all travel costs to the US. The Shriners Hospital will cover all expenses related to Malak’s treatment, from the fitted prosthetic to her physiotherapy.
Malak, which means angel, and her parents arrived in Malta early yesterday aboard a Korean fishing vessel used by the foundation to ferry food and medical provisions to Libya since the war broke out in February.
“It was a long voyage and we are tired but feel very good to be here... Malak was given a lot of toys during the trip and she is doing very well,” her father Mostafa Mohammed Al Shami said, soon after stepping off the Al Entisar. In solidarity with their little passenger, and the hundreds of other children who lost their lives or were injured during the war, the ship raised the flag of the Libyan Transitional National Council set up as a political body representing the anti-Gaddafi movement.
Malak’s unfolding story made international headlines over the past months after a rocket exploded inside her home on May 13.
Malak, her three-year-old brother Mohamed and one-year-old sister Rodayna had just lain down for an afternoon nap in their mother’s room.
Suddenly, their neighbourhood, controlled by rebels opposing Libya’s government, came under attack by Gaddafi forces.
Their mother, Safia, had just got up to do some housework when a rocket, about nine feet long and 15 inches around, crashed through her bedroom wall and exploded, CNN news agency reported.
Malak’s right leg was nearly torn off, and her left arm and leg were broken.
Speaking to a CNN reporter, her mother recounted: “I lifted them up one after the other... I kept praying; God make me patient. God make me patient. And I found Malak alive but Mohamed and Rodayna looked dead. The two youngest children were dead,” she said.
Malak’s parents are now focusing on one objective – getting their daughter to the US where she will be fitted with the prosthetic leg that will allow her to run and be a child again.
Sitting in the Gżira apartment where they will be spending the next few days before setting off to the US, her father said: “She looks forward to walking again... Like all children she likes fun and games.”
Beside him Malak is clearly upset and unsettled as she had just been going through photos of her brother and sister on her parents’ laptop during a previous interview.
As she goes through emotional mood swings, she smiles and hugs her parents, sobbing between kisses, and impatiently insists that she wants to go to the fun park she noticed nearby. Yet, despite their horribly traumatic experience in Misurata, the family are determined to return home after visiting the US.
“Gaddafi made all our people and our children suffer... We will do anything to get him out and make him look bad. Malak is the voice for all Misurata’s children... It is our country, he can leave,” her father said.