It wasn’t the Hudson River. It wasn’t a soft landing. It wasn’t a happy ending. When the Yemenia Airlines Airbus went down in the rough seas of the Indian Ocean, 152 people perished. Everyone on board. Everyone except a 14-year-old girl named Bahia Bakari. The way her father describes her, Bahia did not fit the profile of a survivor. She could “barely swim” her father told the Associated Press. She was, he said, a fragile, timid girl.
Bahia was on the plane with her mother, flying from their home in Paris, to Yemen, then on to the Comoros Islands off the southeast coast of Africa to visit Bahia’s grandma. Their flight was approaching the Comoros when it disappeared from the radar. With the wind blowing at nearly 40 miles an hour, the plane went down in the choppy seas of the Indian Ocean. Bahia’s father, back in Paris, recounted for the AP what his daughter told him over the phone. “Papa, we saw the plane going down in the water. I was in the water. I could hear people talking, but I couldn’t see anyone. I was in the dark. I couldn’t see a thing. On top of that, daddy, I can’t swim well and I held onto something, but I don’t really know what.”
Whatever she held on to, she never let go.