NAJAF, IRAQ —— Perking up from her position on a rug in her family's modest Najaf home Friday, 25-year-old Iklas Hakak let out a tiny gasp, a shy smile appearing on her pretty pale face as the Marines walked inside.

The Americans had kept their promise to bring her a new wheelchair from the nearby city of Karbala.

The gift, however welcome, was as much a responsibility as it was generosity.

On Aug. 5, when violence erupted between the Camp Pendleton-based Marines and local Shiite militants, a U.S. Air Force gunship supporting the Marines pounded her neighborhood with cannon fire.

One of the foot-long 105mm shells crashed through her roof, ricocheted off a second story wall and shot down to the living room, where it struck Hakak in the legs.

Although the shell did not detonate as it should have —— the blast would have surely killed her ——- the impact of the heavy round ripped her left leg from her body and smashed her right foot, leaving the beautiful and otherwise healthy young college graduate forever disfigured.

She is one of what human rights groups say are countless thousands of Iraqi civilians killed or maimed by the fighting in Iraq since the United States invaded two years ago, innocents caught in the crossfire and left uncounted —— and often forgotten —— by the combatants.

Don't forget me

With her left leg now amputated well above the knee and her right leg ending in a stump just beyond her ankle, the promising young geography graduate could be condemned to a life of isolation in a culture that is hard on women and harder on the handicapped.

But however bitter Hakak could be toward the Americans who changed her life forever, she showed nothing but gratitude and love for the small group of Marines who visit her often and whom she now says are like family.

"I like you very much," she said in hushed but well-spoken English to Marine Col. Tony Haslam, who personally brought the wheelchair to her on Friday.

She gripped his large hand with her slim, soft fingers as she peered up at him with penetrating dark eyes.

"Please," she said softly, "don't forget me."

Do the right thing

Haslam, the commander of the Camp Pendleton-based 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which has responsibility for Najaf, said he first heard of Hakak when he was patrolling nearby about a month after the fighting ended.

Hakak's brother, Abbas Moshen, approached the tall Marine commander in the street and told him an American bomb had taken his sister's leg.

At first, the commander could not connect the Marines' weapons to that neighborhood on the day Moshen said the accident occurred. Haslam said he only believed the young man's story when he saw craters in the adjacent street that had probably been wrought by the AC-130 gunship's heavy cannon.

When he went inside and met Hakak for the fist time, her wounds were badly infected and her spirits were crushed.

He knew he had to help, he said.

"I just knew we had to get this girl to the states," he said, recounting the story just outside her house after the visit Friday. "That's all we could think of —— get her to the states, get her to the states.

"We started the e-mail thing, just trying to find what we could do, find someone to help."

But nothing seemed to happen, Haslam said.

Normally in Iraq, the U.S. military only pays what they call solatia or condolence compensation of up to a couple thousand dollars to families who have been affected by military operations.

The loss of a limb or a loved one is paid for in cash, and the case is usually closed.

But Haslam said he couldn't leave Hakak to the system —— a system that he has used to pay more than $5 million to other Najafi families since the fighting ended here in late August.

Between sisters in war

Haslam said he did what he could, immediately calling on his unit's Navy doctor Maureen McClenahan to check her out. He eventually found doctors in Baghdad who could control the infection and save more of Hakak's right foot.

Several surgeries and several months later —— after the Marines and the pro-American governor of Najaf paid for her family to accompany her to Baghdad for treatment —— Hakak is back home, smiling and seeming to do much better as she faces the certain struggle ahead.

"Look what we got for you," said "Doc" McClenahan Friday as she rolled the simple wheelchair into Hakak's home.

McClenahan, who looks like she's barely out of her teens, soothed and encouraged the young Iraqi with the ease of an experienced physician, coaxing a smile from Hakak as she got down to the uncomfortable business of inspecting her terrible scars.

"Thank you," Hakak said, pointing to the chair.

"Now you can get out and enjoy the sunshine," McClenahan said, kneeling at Hakak's side as Hakak timidly pulled her right leg out from beneath a thick blanket.

McClenahan tenderly unwrapped white linen bandages from the stump where surgeons last worked on her ankle. A pin still holds together bones splintered by the errant shell.

"Much better," McClenahan said with a smile, which Hakak answered with a smile as she returned her right foot and reluctantly pulled the stump of her left thigh from beneath the blanket.

All around, sprightly teenage girls —— cousins and sisters in black abaya cloaks —— stood and watched, occasionally saying things in giggly Arabic that seemed to put Hakak at ease.

Dreams crushed by shell

Hakak said she had graduated from nearby Kufa University in 2001 with a degree in geography. She said she had hoped to go on to graduate school and maybe an academic career, but now her options are limited and her future in Iraq is uncertain.

"Now, I cannot do that," she said, beginning to sob softly. "In my culture, I cannot do much."

Her sobbing turned to flowing tears that she wiped from her cheeks with a tissue, seeming to be embarrassed as she noticed the hush that befell the room.

She said that when the governor of the province —— a friend of the Marines —— visited her recently, she did not ask him for help.

"I was too embarrassed to tell him," she said meekly.

Her father fingered a string of worry beads and sighed heavily as he watched his daughter weep.

Trying to revive the earlier cheer, Haslam reminded Hakak of the prosthetic leg that will be prepared for her by American-trained specialists in Baghdad once her wounds heal.

Bonds of tragedy

"You have to send me pictures, when you start walking again," Haslam said in a fatherly tone that brought a brief smile to her lips again. "You're a strong girl. You'll do fine."

"Okay," Hakak said, smiling for a moment before the tears came again.

"Sure, I can walk," she said, looking down to where her legs were covered by the blanket as she wiped more tears. "But not the same as before."

The colonel said he would do what he could to make sure Hakak is taken care of once he and the rest of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit pulls out of Najaf and heads home next month.

Until then, he promised her that he'd visit every few days and gave her his e-mail so that she could write him on the new laptop provided by the governor at the Marines' request.

"We will feel sad when you are gone," Hakak told the colonel, her feelings for the charismatic American commander dancing around in her soft dark eyes as she spoke.

She asked how long he had been in Iraq away from his family.

"Since May," he replied.

Seeming more concerned for his plight than her own, she wished him well as he and the Marines prepared to leave the house.

"We pray for you to come back home safe," she said.

Contact staff writer Darrin Mortenson at dmortenson@nctimes.com.