She had always loved to paint and draw, something it appeared the little girl from Afghanistan might never do again after she mistakenly picked up a grenade outside her war-torn home last year and it blew off much of her right arm.
But with the help of doctors, prosthetists and a prominent Los Angeles artist, 7-year-old Shah Bibi Tarakhail dispelled any notion that something as ugly as war can stifle a small child's determination to add beauty to the world.
"What color would you like?" asked artist Davyd Whaley as he sat next to her at a table at the Galerie Michael on Rodeo Drive in the heart of Beverly Hills yesterday afternoon.
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"That one!" the normally reticent girl responded with a firm voice as she pointed to a tube of blue acrylic. Then, before her mentor could fetch it, she grabbed it with her new prosthetic hand, unscrewed the top with her other hand and began squeezing the tube's contents onto a palette.
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.
