The lone survivor of flight IY626
Jan 21, 2010 23:25:09 GMT
Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2010 23:25:09 GMT
I don't know if you remember the crash of flight IY626, the Yemenia Airlines flight from Paris to Moroni that crashed on June 30th. 152 people died and one young girl survived, Bahia Bakary. She spent 8 hours hanging on to a piece of debris in rough seas before being found. She had been travelling with her mother.
A book came out this week about what happened to her, and she remembers every detail very clearly, the relaxed atmosphere of happy Comorans returning to the homeland for a holiday, who didn't mind that the plane was dilapidated. And then the airplane started shaking like a leaf and there was a big suction and the sound of metal tearing. Bahia found herself in the water with waves washing over her, and lots of other survivors screaming and crying... until all of the other voices stopped and she was all alone in the night. First she was full of hope but as time passed it gave way to despair; she kept fighting against falling asleep anyway, and finally a sailor arrived and fished her out of the water.
She didn't know that the plane had crashed. She thought that she had been sucked out through a window and that the plane had continued flying. And she believed that her mother had arrived in Moroni and was sick with worry, waiting for her to appear, and that was what kept her alive.
The next morning they told her what had happened in the hospital. Bahia is 13 years old.
Her father, a sanitation worker, flew to Moroni to bring her back to France, and life goes on. She says it doesn't bother her to talk about the crash "because I already had to tell everything to the crash investigation office" but she doesn't like having to appear in public and talking to journalists who followed her around like vultures for months.
They live in an apartment in the suburbs of Paris. Bahia is the eldest daughter, so she helps her father with her three brothers and sisters. He does the cooking and she does the cleaning. The father says "It's complicated for me. I have to be the mother part of the time, too, whereas before I could yell at the children and their mother would console them or vice versa. Now there is an absence."
Bahia went back to school when it started again this autumn, and she is one of the better students in 9th grade, with an option in European studies. Her family duties keep her too busy now, so she had to give up modern jazz, but she loves math, physics and chemistry. She wants to be a doctor "but not a surgeon because I don't want to open up people."
She stopped seeing the psychologist when school started but her father says he kept the phone numbers just in case. He himself is comforted by Islam and gin and tonic. They don't talk about the mother often, but they look at the old family pictures regularly. The father remains fatalistic and says he doesn't blame the airline. "It was destiny." He doesn't even like it when people refer to the plane as a piece of junk. "I took that same flight nine times. And look at the Air France crash on Rio-Paris with a brand new plane."
The only thing Bahia is angry about is the movie that Steven Spielberg wants to make about the flight. "Nobody can reproduce what I suffered!"
A book came out this week about what happened to her, and she remembers every detail very clearly, the relaxed atmosphere of happy Comorans returning to the homeland for a holiday, who didn't mind that the plane was dilapidated. And then the airplane started shaking like a leaf and there was a big suction and the sound of metal tearing. Bahia found herself in the water with waves washing over her, and lots of other survivors screaming and crying... until all of the other voices stopped and she was all alone in the night. First she was full of hope but as time passed it gave way to despair; she kept fighting against falling asleep anyway, and finally a sailor arrived and fished her out of the water.
She didn't know that the plane had crashed. She thought that she had been sucked out through a window and that the plane had continued flying. And she believed that her mother had arrived in Moroni and was sick with worry, waiting for her to appear, and that was what kept her alive.
The next morning they told her what had happened in the hospital. Bahia is 13 years old.
Her father, a sanitation worker, flew to Moroni to bring her back to France, and life goes on. She says it doesn't bother her to talk about the crash "because I already had to tell everything to the crash investigation office" but she doesn't like having to appear in public and talking to journalists who followed her around like vultures for months.
They live in an apartment in the suburbs of Paris. Bahia is the eldest daughter, so she helps her father with her three brothers and sisters. He does the cooking and she does the cleaning. The father says "It's complicated for me. I have to be the mother part of the time, too, whereas before I could yell at the children and their mother would console them or vice versa. Now there is an absence."
Bahia went back to school when it started again this autumn, and she is one of the better students in 9th grade, with an option in European studies. Her family duties keep her too busy now, so she had to give up modern jazz, but she loves math, physics and chemistry. She wants to be a doctor "but not a surgeon because I don't want to open up people."
She stopped seeing the psychologist when school started but her father says he kept the phone numbers just in case. He himself is comforted by Islam and gin and tonic. They don't talk about the mother often, but they look at the old family pictures regularly. The father remains fatalistic and says he doesn't blame the airline. "It was destiny." He doesn't even like it when people refer to the plane as a piece of junk. "I took that same flight nine times. And look at the Air France crash on Rio-Paris with a brand new plane."
The only thing Bahia is angry about is the movie that Steven Spielberg wants to make about the flight. "Nobody can reproduce what I suffered!"