AP/Aljazeera: The 8-year-old Syrian girl, quietly crying in an Istanbul clinic, was overwhelmed by the new set of prosthetic legs she had just received and taken aback by the cameras pointed at her by journalists attending the fitting.
Maya Meri has been in the spotlight since images of her plight hit social media last month. She was filmed in a camp for the displaced in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province walking around on contraptions her father made from tuna cans, plastic tubes and fabric.
“I thought of doing something that would protect her while on the ground from stones and other things, so I made these limbs for her,” said her father, Mohammed.
Maya was born without legs because of a condition called congenital amputation. Her story moved one Turkish prosthetics specialist to reach out to Turkey’s largest humanitarian organization, which evacuated her from Syria.
Maya is now in Istanbul with her father, who shares the same disability. On Thursday, as journalists looked on, prosthetics specialist Mehmet Zeki Culcu took off Maya’s makeshift legs. He first wrapped her limbs in protective layers of fabric and then placed her in temporary prosthetics. Camera shutters clicked as Culcu lifted Maya up and she stood in her purple and pink sneakers, which looked a few sizes too big.
Originally from Aleppo province, the Meri family had to move to escape the fighting.
“We fled to an area that has not witnessed bombardment but it was difficult to live there in a tent on a mountain,” said Mohammed, who has five other children still in Syria with their mother.
Read more here
