Beauty From Ashes

Aftershock

Searching in the aftershocks, Antonio watches a large block of concrete, that used to form the base of a balcony, slip away and reveal a dusty grey forearm. He watches as the hand shivers and feels for the air, but he knows this is not the hand he is looking for. And yet, this is a human being, a soul, and he cannot persuade himself that the fingers are moving solely from the breeze. He starts to dig with his cracked fingers, the nails already splintered from sharp rock, teasing heavy stones from around the arm, pushing them away so that they roll down the hill with a tap, tap, tap, then stop.

He is soon joined by others, each as tired and dirty as he is, but he cannot leave. He knows he wants to, he knows he should, but he cannot. In the meantime his wife of three years lies hidden only metres away under a tonne of steel and glass. As they carry away the young woman, a powerful vibration brings down the church tower, burying his wife under a further two metres of rubble that is too heavy for any man or woman to move. She stops breathing and shortly after, she dies.

On the day that his wife's limp and dry body is recovered, Antonio is in the hospital thirty kilometres away. He has brought flowers, a bunch of white chrysanthemums, for the woman he rescued. He is unaware of the discovery and still harbours the faintest hope of a miracle. The young woman sits up straight in bed, and Antonio is surprised that she no longer wears any bandages. He sees only scratches to her face, which he places at around twenty five years of age; he does not recognise her, and yet he will never forget her features. 'You saved my life', she tells him. 'I was praying that someone would find me. I could hear the sound of voices calling out, but my jaw was locked shut and I could barely breathe.'

Two weeks later a mass funeral is held for those who died in the earthquake. In total there are seventy six coffins, but only one matters to Antonio. He cries openly for the first time in his life, as he wonders that he might have found his wife had he not stopped. He considers whether it is better to have saved one life, any life, because he might have saved neither. He forgets that he would have been trapped under the falling masonry and for a moment he wishes he too were dead.

The young woman watches the funeral from a distance, for she did not know any of the victims. She feels a mixture of ecstasy and guilt at surviving. Why was she rescued whilst all these other people died? She finds Antonio and they embrace, each feeling forever connected to the other. They wipe away each other's tears. After that night he never sees her again.

Twelve months later a woman comes to his door late in the evening and offers him a baby, which he immediately accepts. He never remarries and instead devotes the next sixteen years to bringing her up. There is a strong resemblance to her mother, and once when she trips, the scars on her face exactly mirror those of the young woman sitting in the hospital bed. But Antonio feels only sadness; sometimes the girl's face is that of the dry and dusty corpse that he identified. Finally, she leaves the home and the village and moves to a large city to study.

He sees her only once more, one night on television. He knows it is her. In the midst of the chaos of a missile strike on a children’s hospital in Syria, he recognises the face of the young woman who holds a child's head close to her neck to protect him from the bullets, the bombs, the smoke and the falling masonry.