2nd Place – Last Mission/Last Hour, Ramin Rahimian
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- “Last Mission/Last Hour” In the early morning of October 20, 2006, six days before his 21st birthday, the Humvee Iraqi translator Diyar al-Bayati was riding in during a routine patrol came under attack by a roadside bomb and an ambush. On his last mission and his last hour as a translator before moving to Kuwait for a safer translating job, Diyar lost both of his legs and had his right arm horribly maimed. On April 11, 2008, after a year and half of recovery and over 70 surgeries in Baghdad and Amman, Jordan, Diyar arrived in Salt Lake City as a refugee. Now, he spends his days waking up late (if he sleeps at all), barely eating, running errands, being taken around to different medical appointments, watching movies, and using the Internet to talk with friends and family. Despite DiyarÕs intense drive, intelligence, self-reliance, and positive attitude about his new life, he can never go back home and his life will never be normal. A towel cools Diyar’s forehead as he experiences a very high fever as he recovers after a long surgery on his right arm at the University of Utah Hospital. What was supposed to only be a one night of recovery, turned into a very long stay. He had to be transferred to the main hospital from the Orthopedic Center when he had complications resulting from an infection. The surgery had spread rare bacteria common to the Middle East called Klebsiella that had been dormant in his right arm.
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- Diyar looks at his old prosthetic legs he received while in the hospital in Amman, Jordan during a session with prosthetics at Fit Well, a prosthetic specialty center in Salt Lake City. Diyar’s hope is to, as soon as possible, receive the most advanced and lightest prosthetic legs through his insurer, AIG. Specialists have told him he needs to strengthen his maimed right arm with further surgeries before receiving the legs.
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- Diyar leaves his apartment to be driven by his caseworker Debi Clark to downtown Salt Lake City for a radio interview with a local NPR affiliate. Only a few weeks after arriving in Utah, local and national press began showing interest in Diyar’s story and Diyar welcomed it.
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- Diyar smokes from a hookah for the first time since arriving in Utah at a Lebanese restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City. Mostly done settling in, swimming through all the red tape, and finished with most work on his right arm, Diyar was in high spirits. He was eager to move on and possibly move to Maryland to be with his girlfriend. His plan was to live with her and her brother and later marry her. Things did not work out with their relationship. His plans changed to focusing on getting his green card, visiting his family in Syria or United Arab Emirates, and eventually, once a citizen, bringing them over to the U.S.
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- Debi, DiyarÕs caseworker, helps him leave the bathroom right before he went in for a major four hour surgery on his right arm at the University of Utah Orthopedic Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Anesthesiologists Jeff Swenson and Karl Hurst-Wicker, right, wait for Diyar to come out so they can prepare him to go into the surgery. Diyar was late for the surgery and had to be rushed from the airport after visiting his girlfriend in Baltimore, Maryland.
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- Diyar shouts in pain as nurses lift his arm to check how it is healing as he recovers from his right arm surgery at the University of Utah Hospital. Diyar had been promised a short stay after the surgery, but the surgery had spread rare bacteria common to the Middle East called Klebsiella that had been dormant in his right arm. Diyar ended up spending about two weeks in the hospital.
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- For the third time in two days, Diyar leaves the Aspen Ridge rehab center and takes an ambulance to a hospital, complaining of severe chest pain and difficulty breathing. In a bare patient intake room at the University of Utah Hospital, Diyar waits to see a doctor. After waiting for a long time, doctors meet him to tell him that he is experiencing complications from his new antibiotic medication. The previous day, at a different hospital, Diyar refused to go back to the rehab center and angrily demanded that he be taken to his apartment against orders by his doctor.
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- Diyar waits on a couch in his living room for a freelance videographer for MTV to interview him for a pre-election package he was working on concerning the state of medical care in the U.S. Diyar has a bed, but he prefers to sleep out in the living room where he spends all of his time when he is home.
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- At a hair salon in Salt Lake City, Elizabeth Trujillo gives Diyar a haircut.
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- Diyar visits the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City.
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- Diyar receives a used electronic wheelchair from Bob Sorbonne of Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Bob read about Diyar in an article published in the Salt Lake Tribune. He decided to donate the wheelchair, an extra one that his handicapped sister no longer needed. Bob’s own son has served two tours of duty in Iraq.
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- Diyar looks up at the sky as he waits to be helped out of the car after going grocery shopping.
