Iraqi doctor stands her ground to deliver life, hope in midst of war

Baghdad, Iraq --- The doctor wanted to help but she hesitated in fear.

Unknown men came to her house after dark earlier this month, seeking help for a relative in labor. They told the doctor through a peephole in the door that they had tried to get to a hospital, but had turned back when they ran into a gunbattle.

But obstetrician Iman Aliwe Atra, 45, cannot risk opening her door at night to strangers in a city where physicians and others are frequently kidnapped or killed --- or both.

In the small clinic at her home, the doctor keeps a panic button as handy as her stethoscope.

For her own security and that of her patients, she induces labor to try to time births during daylight hours so she and the mothers do not have to spend nights in the city's hospitals, which are not immune from abductions and killings.

"I always take security measures with my patients. I give them my mobile number and they call me at night. If I don't recognize them, I don't open my door," Atra said.

Neighboring Syria and Jordan are flush with Iraqi professionals who have fled the violence. But Atra still feels joy in bringing infants into the world --- even the violent world of today's Baghdad.

Her southern Baghdad neighborhood has grown increasingly dangerous. Sunnis are being killed by Shiite militias. And a recent car bomb, the usual tactic of Sunni militants, killed dozens.

Atra is a Shiite with a Sunni assistant in a neighborhood that is mostly Shiite. A chatty, independent mother of four, she doles out treatment to her patients in shrinking circles of safety for modest pay.

Among the decorations in her two-room home clinic is a photo of a baby whose mother she treated for infertility. The mother named her newborn after the doctor's son.

"The important thing is that I did my job and I see the baby and the mother healthy and that makes me happy. Secondly, as believers we can't lose hope. Being Muslim, if we feel desperation, it would be a sin," she said. "We can't lose the faith. We say because of this baby, maybe that's a reason to have hope."

She practices medicine at her home clinic and a public hospital. But with violence in the streets and sometimes in the hospital halls, she lets mothers who have Caesarean sections go home after just one night rather than the five they might have spent in the hospital in safer times. The local ambulance service often brings cases to her home clinic at night instead of risking a drive to the hospital.

On the night when she balked at helping the men with the pregnant woman, a solution was found. A couple of Iraqi soldiers nearby offered to stand guard. Atra delivered a baby girl and, when the patient started bleeding, let her spend the night in the small examining room rather than make another attempt to reach the hospital.

Her patients are fortunate the doctor is in at all. About 18 months ago Atra closed a clinic she maintained in an office building after one doctor she knew was killed and another was kidnapped.

Her estranged husband, an anesthesiologist, was almost kidnapped a few months earlier. He was grabbed and forced into a car trunk but neighbors rescued him. Later, he fled the country. Atra stayed in Iraq with their four children.

"I love my country. ... If all of us left the country [who would stay]? What about my brothers, my sisters, my relatives?"

She prides herself on standing her ground. As a medical student during the Iran-Iraq war, she said, she treated soldiers in the embattled southern city of Basra for three years.

And when her neighborhood in Baghdad was the scene of heavy fighting and civilian casualties during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, she helped run a makeshift emergency center at a mosque.

To replace her old office, she has built a new clinic on her front lawn, behind the wall and gate typical of middle-class houses like hers. She has an electronic button near her desk to alert her children if she is in danger.

Between her work at a government hospital and her private practice, she estimates she earns the equivalent of $1,120 a month. Nearly a quarter of that goes to power the small generator that runs her lights and sparse medical equipment. She has a small TV set on which she watches news and Western medical shows beamed by satellite.

Despite the dangers, she still drives herself to the public hospital where she works many mornings. For protection, she reads three verses from the Quran before the trip.

"Even though I heard there have been threats against women driving, I keep driving. ... If you listened to every threat you would just lock your door and stay home." WAR IN IRAQ > Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said some 12,000 Iraqi policemen have been killed since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein. > The White House confirmed that U.S. troops detained at least two Iranian guests of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and released two others who had diplomatic immunity during a raid on suspected insurgents. > British soldiers raided a police station in the southern city of Basra after learning renegade Iraqi police might kill prisoners. Seven gunmen were killed, and all 76 prisoners, some with "classic torture injuries," were transferred to another facility before the station was destroyed with explosives. > A car bomb exploded next to an open-air market in a mostly Shiite district of Baghdad, killing nine civilians and wounding 11, and a suicide bomber blew himself up in a minibus, killing three people and injuring 19. Police found 40 bodies, apparent victims of sectarian violence. > The U.S. military said a U.S. soldier and a Marine died from combat wounds suffered in Anbar province, and another U.S. soldier died in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, raising an Associated Press death count of American troops to 2,972 --- one fewer than the number of people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

--- Associated Press

Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution