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It’s not just basketball and skyscrapers with Bruce Ratner.
The uber-developer — best known for his under-construction Brooklyn arena for the Nets — is vigorously trying to cut through bureaucratic red tape to keep a teenage Sudanese ex-slave in the United States to help restore the boy’s eyesight.
Ratner and his sister, Fox News analyst Ellen Ratner, first met tortured, blinded Ker Deng, now 18, on a trip to Sudan in April, nearly a year after the rights group Christian Solidarity International rescued him from slavery. The Ratners were touched by Deng’s horrifying story.
Deng and his mother, both South Sudanese Christians, had been captured years earlier by vicious North Sudanese tribal thugs during the country’s bloody civil war. Deng spent his days picking tea, nights sleeping with goats and spare time trying to avoid routine beatings.
Deng’s slave master had blinded him by rubbing peppers in his eyes and hanging him upside down from a tree over a fire.
He was released only because his captors deemed him useless as a worker.
Bruce Ratner said he knew he wanted to help Deng minutes after they met through CSI, an organization his sister has been involved with.
“While other children were playing, [Deng] was sitting down in a chair all day with his head down,” Ratner recalled. “But when I spoke to him, I realized he had an infectious smile and amazing personality.”
When the Ratners returned to America, they immediately began working with US Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, to get the teen a three-month visa so he could undergo an operation at Wills Institute in Philadelphia, a top eye-treatment center.
Deng arrived in the United States a month ago, and after three eye surgeries, including retinal attachments, doctors say he’s made tremendous progress.
He has begun to see shapes and flickers of light, and Thursday, was even able to distinguish the bend of a rainbow and its colors.
But his recovery is far from over. The Ratners and health-care professionals believe Deng, whose visa expires Nov. 3, needs to stay in America at least 18 more months in case there are complications from his surgery.
They say Sudan isn’t equipped to handle his medical needs.
Bruce Ratner has quietly covered all of Deng’s expenses, including his travel and medical costs and those of an uptown apartment for him and a round-the-clock caretaker.
Both Bruce and Ellen also have enrolled Deng at Lighthouse International, a Manhattan-based nonprofit that helps the visually impaired with daily living.
Deng, according to Lighthouse staff, has displayed significant musical talent during early piano and drum lessons. He’s also finally getting a formal education.
Deng is set to testify Oct. 4 in Washington, DC, before Congressman Smith’s committee. The teen said he “loves” America and plans to tell the pols “how unimaginable life is” in Sudan.
He says he prays that his mother is still alive and that someday they’ll be reunited, adding that his goal is to study ministry and return to Sudan to spread the “word of God.”
But the Ratners have even higher aspirations for Deng. They believe he has the charisma and intelligence to someday become a leader of South Sudan.
“My vision is he’ll be sworn in as president of South Sudan with his mother by his side,” Ellen Ratner said.
Meanwhile, Deng and Bruce Ratner have become quite attached. At a meeting Friday at Lighthouse, Deng greeted the developer with a shout — “Bruce!” — and gave him a big hug.
Deng says he doesn’t know much about basketball, but Ratner hopes to change that when his Barclays Center arena opens in next fall.
“If you are still here, I am going to take you to the first Nets game and explain everything,” Ratner told Deng, while both embraced.