The doctors and therapists who worked with a little girl from Afghanistan knew the prosthetic arm they gave her would change her life, according to the Associated Press.
What they didn't anticipate was that within weeks of strapping on her new limb, 7-year-old Shah Bibi Tarakhail would be using it to pick up a brush and begin carving out a new life by abstract painting, the AP reported.
As her friends from the nonprofit Children of War Foundation and the Shriners Hospital for Children Los Angeles looked on with delight, Shah Bibi proceeded to put a series of broad brush strokes across a piece of art board Whaley had provided, according to the AP.
Soon there were shades of blue, green and bright orange laid out across little stickers of fish, bunnies, a flower and sky that Whaley had showed her how to place on the board beforehand, the AP reported.
At one point she giggled with embarrassment as she accidentally squeezed a tube of orange paint onto the painting rather than the palette, according to the AP. But Whaley quickly assured her that accidental art sometimes makes the best abstract art.
Shah Bibi, he said, not only handles a brush well but has an impressive grasp of matching colors, Whaley said, the AP reported. "She kind of has a facility for it if she wants to pursue it."
Less than a year ago, Shah Bibi was back at home in Afghanistan when she went outside one morning to play with her brother, according to the AP. There had been a violent battle pitting Taliban fighters against U.S. military forces the night before, but that was nothing residents weren't used to.
"There was what looked like a rock that she picked up and threw on the ground and it exploded," said Ilaha Omar, a Children of War Foundation member who brought her to the United States, where Shriners Hospital treated her for free, the AP reported.
The explosion destroyed her right eye, taken off most of her right arm, put a few scars on her face and killed her brother, according to the AP.
She'll return to her family next week, but Children of War plans to bring her back next year to fit her with a prosthetic eye and attend to her scars, the AP reported.
Fluent in the Afghan languages of Pashto and Dari, she's also picked up a good deal of English since arriving in the U.S. late last year, according to the AP.
