Local activist brings a girl home from Gaza to restore her sight.

Seasde peace activist Hanan Shawar thought she was delirious.

For about a week in early March, she and two colleagues had been filming the destruction in the Gaza Strip in the wake of Israel’s 22-day siege. The suffering was beyond anything she had ever seen; the days and nights rolled together.

She’d come to Gaza as part of a 60-person CODEPINK delegation (including Medea Benjamin and Alice Walker) delivering food, clothes and supplies to the war-torn region for International Women’s Day, March 8. But Shawar quickly peeled off from the police-escorted group and began working with British politician and talk show host George Galloway, who was delivering humanitarian aid and filming.

“I wasn’t going to be stuck on the bus doing what everyone else was doing,” she says.

“YOU JUST LOOK AT THIS LITTLE GIRL AND SAY, ‘OH MY GOD, WHAT CAN I DO?’”

In one crowded, bomb-damaged home, about 20 kids played while Shawar translated their parents’ testimonies about the impacts of Israel’s 20-month blockade of food and supplies. Then a little girl in a dirty red sweatsuit appeared, her hair pulled back in a honey-brown ponytail. The skin stretching from her nose to her forehead looked like an out-of-focus picture: Her right eye was covered with skin, and the left was raw and cloudy.

“I was like, ‘Am I that tired?’” Shawar recalls. “I saw her and I just died inside. The first words I said were, ‘Oh, she’s coming with me.’”

Hadil was not disfigured by the bombing – she was born with congenital deformities. But she can no longer travel through Gaza’s tightened borders to hospitals in Israel and Egypt, where doctors had begun a series of operations on her eyes, her parents told Shawar. Without follow-up care, her condition deteriorated.

Shawar convinced Hadil’s parents to let her bring the girl back to the United States for reconstructive surgery, with hopes that an American surgeon can restore her sight and give her a more normal appearance as she begins school. Shawar promised to return the 6-year-old safely.

The next day, the woman and the girl traveled to the Rafah Gate, where Egyptian border soldiers had previously turned Hadil’s family away.

“I took her in my arms and held her,” Shawar says. “They took one look at her and couldn’t say no.”

Shawar spoke with the Weekly from a rented flat in Cairo. She was supposed to be home in Seaside already, but first she had to get Hadil’s visa. In the down-time, she replaced a stolen laptop, fed the girl bananas and kebab – “she’s just eating like a wild kitty,” Shawar says – and bought her practical clothes for the journey, along with one piece of bling: a new pair of pink shoes.

Hadil sees a little bit by holding objects close to her veiled eyes, Shawar explains: “She’s a very bright kid. She’s teaching me the names of all the Arabic colors.”

She has no idea how much Hadil’s care will cost, but she’s confident people will donate to the cause. “Who knows, we may even find a doctor who is willing to help her. You just look at this little girl who is someone’s daughter and you say, ‘Oh my god, what can I do?’”

Shawar pauses, then continues softly: “She’s not the only one. I wish I could grab them all and help them all.”

She recalls children with missing limbs and people with skin burned by what she says are white phosphorous shells. She describes uprooted crop fields, leveled schools and hospitals, homes destroyed by bombs. She recounts stories of people jobless and hungry from the closed borders, their neighbors and relatives killed, and everywhere, traumatized children.

Hadil sings war songs, Shawar says with a choked voice.

Two days later Shawar calls back to report that she has to cross the border again, to take Hadil to Jerusalem for her medical visa. Rep. Sam Farr’s office is helping her navigate the paperwork – “I’m very hopeful this visa will be approved and this innocent child will receive a new lease on life,” Farr says – but Shawar is stressed by the complications and haunted by the things she’s witnessed.

Shawar’s family left Jerusalem 30 years ago, when she was 10, eventually relocating to the Monterey Peninsula, where she still lives with her parents and 16-year-old daughter. Since the start of America’s War on Terror after 9/11, Shawar has been constantly organizing anti-war protests, peace-award banquets and artistic demonstrations.

“She has so much energy,” says Lawrence Samuels, co-chair of the local Libertarians for Peace, which, along with Monterey CODEPINK, is part of the Peace Coalition of Monterey County. Samuels acted as treasurer for Shawar’s trip to Gaza, donating part of the money for her plane ticket.

Bringing a sick Palestinian girl to Seaside is an unlikely mission, Samuels says, but “if it’s humanly possible, she can do it.”

If she makes it home with Hadil, Shawar plans to take the girl out between doctors’ visits – to the Seaside Boys & Girls Club, the beach, the Aquarium – so that when she goes home to Gaza, she’ll have a positive image of America.

“Maybe she can tell the rest of them we don’t wish them bad,” she says. “We are trying to help them as much as we can.”

To donate, visit http://montereycodepink.com/offering.php or call 869-1694. View a slideshow of Shawar’s photos at montereycountyweekly.com.