The Desert Girl and the Deep

I was still in bed when the first explosion went off. We had been told to prepare so I was mostly dressed. I jumped into my shoes and grabbed my pack. The second explosion took out the power grid and the hallway was dark. A woman carrying a child careened off me as I headed to the stairs. Plaster was raining down as the stairway filled with panicked guests.

Out in the street, a man grabbed my arm and pulled me into an alley as another shell struck. The shock wave knocked me off my feet. My head was ringing. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but he gestured for me to follow him. The street was chaos. Glass and bricks were falling everywhere. The shelling went on for what seemed like an eternity and then abruptly stopped. Cries and screams tore the air.

Immediately, teams of men appeared and began digging through the rubble. I didn’t understand their dialect but I dove right in to help.

As they set about their work, they were remarkably quiet. Periodically, someone would shout out and then we would all stop to listen. In that moment of stillness, I heard a tiny voice, a girl’s voice. I yelled out to the others.

I tried to summon a phrase in Arabic to comfort the trapped girl and finally blurted out “Stay calm, we’ll get you out.” She answered me in English. “Thank you. I will.”

As the rescuers tried to determine how best to reach her, it became my job to reassure her. Imagining her situation, trapped deep under the rubble, panicked me. I told her my name and that many people were working to free her.

She told me her name was Leilah. She was 16. She wanted to be a marine biologist. “Yes,” she laughed then coughed, “This girl from her dry, dry, landlocked country, all she dreams about is the ocean.”

A man named Ahmed pushed his way forward and expertly snaked tubes through the rubble to bring Leilah oxygen and water. From his hand gestures and my pathetic grasp of the language, I understood that they had to bring in a jack to lift the beam that was pinning Leilah. I was to keep her talking.

It wasn’t hard. Leilah had so much to say. Her family had pooled their resources and scraped together money to send her away before the insurgents invaded the area. If the coup succeeded, the town would be plunged back to the dark ages. School for girls was out of the question.

There was a tremendous groan as a damaged apartment building collapsed nearby. The situation was perilous, so to distract us, Leilah began to make up a story. She was a mini-sub pilot diving at great depths and I was onboard her mother ship tethered to her by cables. She described in detail the fish, the corals, the jellies and the sea cucumbers she was seeing. She asked me to look around for her notebook. If I could find it, I would see all drawings of undersea life she had made.

As she talked, the rescuers and I slowly pulled rubble away bit by bit. Then we would have to wait to make sure nothing shifted. I clawed at the debris until I finally got a glimpse of her face. She was completely covered with pale gray dust; only her bright eyes were shining out at me.

“Alex! So good to see you.”

It took hours, but as the team continued to work on lifting the concrete and rubble, I was able to widen a hole until I could reach my hand in and touch Leilah’s fingers. I fumbled in my pack, found an energy bar and pushed it down to her.

“Stay strong. We’re almost there.”

We talked about the epic journey she had planned. We talked about colleges in the U.S. and I told her that she should try for an apprenticeship at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I told her I had once interviewed a young woman scientist who was studying sea anemones there.

“Octopus. I want to make friends with an octopus.” She giggled. “I saw that movie.”

We talked about being weightless, how being in the deep ocean would be like being in space, how the creatures in the deep created their own light.

One of the rescuers came and lay down next to me. He introduced himself to Leila. His name was Sharif and he talked at length to Leilah. She translated for me. He asked her questions about how she felt, if she was in any pain. She had told him her legs were trapped. She told me that the rescuers were going to lift the beam and that an ambulance was standing by. She told me that Sharif had said I should be ready to help pull her to safety.

The rescuers had the jack in place and the beam began to creak and move. But lifting the beam had released the pressure on Leilah’s thigh. A geyser of blood shot up. Sharif dove in under the beam and tried to get a tourniquet around her upper leg but he couldn’t force the strap under her leg. She was bleeding out. I didn’t think. I reached under my shirt and tore off my undershirt, balled it and shoved it into the wound. I bore down on it as best I could. Sharif screamed something to the team and men came and shoved timbers under the beam. There was a lot of shouting and I could see panic rising in Leilah’ eyes.

“Look at me. You have to stay calm. It’s all okay,” I told her “We’ve slowed the bleeding. They’re coming with a stretcher.”

A man wearing a Red Crescent helmet took Sharif’s place. He cut Leilah’s jacket and inserted an IV. He tried again to get the tourniquet in place but the position was wrong. He pressed down on my right hand. “Hard as you can. We have to get her out NOW. Hang on as tight as you can.”

The Red Crescent guy stood up and shouted orders.

“Alex, come closer.” Leilah whispered as she slid her hand under her padded jacket. With difficulty, she pried out the corner of an envelope. “Take this. Take this now.” Her command was so forceful. I snatched the envelope with my left hand and shoved it into my jacket. I knew instinctively it was her escape money. “I’ll keep it for you. Don’t worry. I’ll give to your parents when I see them in the hospital.”

“No.” Her eyes were fierce and her voice was strong though I could feel the energy draining from her.

“I want you to dive for me. Somewhere deep. With lots of colorful fish and coral. Promise.”

“We’ll dive together.”

“Bloody optimist.”

The next few moments went so fast. Men scrambled in and pulled away the rest of the rumble. A backboard was shoved in. I hung on to the shirt and squeezed it to Leilah’s leg as best I could. I could feel the blood seeping with every jerk as we moved her. As soon as Leilah was out, the medics took over.

I was standing off to the side watching. Leilah was chatting with the men one minute and the next she was violently shaking. She was in shock. They did mouth to mouth. They did CPR. I realized that Ahmed had grabbed my arms and was holding me back.

And then it was over.

A cry broke from my throat and I sank to my knees. The Red Crescent man said, “I’m so sorry about your daughter.” I started to sob.

Leilah’s body was removed and the rescuers trailed away. Ahmed embraced me. He only spoke Arabic but I understood. Leilah may not have been my daughter but she became daughter to all of us that day.

I was left alone on the heap of rubble that had been the bus station where Leilah had entered to buy her ticket. It was the first leg on her journey to Turkey where she would see the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, and eventually the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the World.

I was so angry. I picked up a chunk of concrete and heaved it and then another and another until I was soaked in sweat and coughing. I doubled over and sobbed.

That’s when I spotted a thin, sharp edge of black amidst all the gray. I dug it out and swept the dirt from the black cover. It was the kind of bound notebook I’d kept in college. I opened the pages and there was a cacophony of color in pencil and paint: a juvenile Queen Angelfish with electric blue outlining its yellow and orange body, a Foureye Butterfish, a searing red Bushy Sea Whip coral, a phantom-like jellyfish. Lailah had produced a whole reef of creatures on the pages. Beneath each, in her meticulous print, were their common and Latinate names. Page after page. Here was her life, her future.

Eventually, I opened the envelope and there it was, a wad of American money. Small bills for bribes, larger bills for airfare. It totaled $20,000. Not enough for an American college but if she had made her way to Germany or Denmark where schooling is free she’d have had a chance of achieving her dream. The desert girl and the deep.

I couldn’t touch Leilah’s money. I paid my own way to Hawaii to learn to dive. I’m working my way up to the Blue Hole in Belize. I purposely don’t bring my cameras with me. Instead every time I dive, I imagine my eyes are recording images that I send to Leilah onboard the mother ship.

Leilah’s small black notebook goes with me on my travels. After each assignment, instead of rushing home, I’m always on the lookout for a place nearby to dive. Leilah and her drawings have connected me to a world I never thought to explore. Because of my promise to her, I’ve have drifted in the infinite peace of the deep, flown among the rays, reached out and touched a brittle star.

I’ve taken to chronicling my dives on the last page of her notebook in pencil. After my sixth dive, I finally reached out through the Red Cross and Red Crescent to find Leilah’s family to return the notebook and the cash. I hope they will forgive my notations when they learn about my promise. If they don’t, the marks can be easily erased.

The mark Leilah made on me, however, is impossible to erase.