A hazy summer light flooded the village. The sky was a clear, bright blue that echoed the peaceful, gentle waves of the sea. At noon I departed from the house of my hostess, Gwanda, and skipped down the steps leading to the shore, sundress blowing in the wind. Gwanda’s son, Ganzi, was already there, playing tag with Layza, his eight-year-old sister. I could hear their laughter even before I reached the bottom of the stone steps. Stepping out of the shade, I called to Ganzi.

He turned. I could see a hint of a five o’clock shadow surrounding his wide smile. “Caroline! Where have you been? You missed the pre-games. I won all three.”

I grinned; I’d understood every word. After two months of living and doing research in the village, I had gotten used to the local accent. It was a stark contrast to my city speech, but lately the difference had begun to matter less.

“Oh, that’s great! I’m sorry I missed them, but your mom asked me to help prepare for tonight. It’s going to be a blast,” I responded cheerfully.

It was the night of the midyear festival when the whole village took a day off work and gathered on the beach to celebrate a prosperous fishing season. Gwanda had been panicking, as there were still many preparations to be done.

“All right. You are forgiven.” Ganzi grinned. His expression then changed from joyous to slightly timid. A faint blush rose to his prominent cheekbones. “I have not asked anyone to the moon dance yet. So … I was wondering if you would be my–”

A loud shout interrupted Ganzi midsentence and startled both of us. We looked to see one of the builders yelling and pointing at the shore. The tide was receding. Very, very quickly. It was the strangest phenomenon I’d ever seen. The water was shrinking away, as if it were being sucked back into the ocean by some invisible force. Uneasiness tugged at my chest.

“What’s going on?” I asked Ganzi. He was frozen, staring at the shore, a statue amidst the increasing commotion.

“Tsunami.”

It was the faintest sound. I wouldn’t have caught it if not for the slight movement of his lips.

Questions whipped through the air. An elderly lady I had often seen wrung her hands and chanted a hurried prayer. Gulls squawked, their wings useless in the sudden gusts of cold wind. A baby wailed in her straw cradle at the change in temperature. It felt as if the whole world was a blur of shouting and running, a tornado with Ganzi and me in the eye. My entire body trembled with fear, an earthquake in itself. I was as cold as if my blood had turned to ice, but I knew it wasn’t because of the sinking temperature.

“What did you say?”

My words were drowned out in an ascending roar. I thought my head would explode from the pressure of sound. In my peripheral vision I caught sight of men, women, and children swarming up the beach. I didn’t feel the frantic tug on my right arm, but my eyes registered a wildly gesturing Ganzi. He spoke rapidly, but I didn’t hear a word.

The fading light behind his body created a halo around his figure, a glowing outline. I looked past him toward the sea. That’s funny, I thought. The waves were no longer peaceful. Instead they were rushing toward the beach at a terrifying pace. They leapt back and forth, back and forth, getting bigger with each second. I imagined they had sharp, watery talons, like a predator waiting to strike. I watched in a dreamlike state as, finally, a giant, grasping claw loomed over the shore.

“Run!” Ganzi shouted. And then it crashed.

I was sprinting for my life up the sand. I didn’t know where I was going. Suddenly I heard a shout.

“Help!”

I knew that voice. I spun around in time to witness the sea swallow Layza’s flailing arms.

No.

My eyes widened. People, my friends, were around me, drowning, struggling in the unforgiving current. Their screams for help pounded in my ears like drums of war. My chest tightened. I was suffocating. My vision blurred. I couldn’t breathe. I stumbled, searching for something to hold on to, and screamed as I tripped over a large rock. The sand scraped my skin, and the pain that shot up my leg was enough to shatter my trance. This is real.

Suddenly, I felt warm hands slide under my back and legs. Ganzi was picking me up and carrying me bridal style – ironic, given the way he was scrambling unceremoniously up the wet sand. He shouted, and a moment later my body was soaked and freezing.

I was dragged underwater and tossed back and forth in a whirlpool like a rag doll. I resurfaced, gasping, choking. Screams filled the air. I flailed and thrashed my arms and legs, but it was no use. The current had an iron grip on me and wouldn’t let go. Before I knew it I was sucked under again. I lost track of how long I was under, tumbling wherever the current led, trying to keep hold of Ganzi. My mind numbed, slowly fading to darkness. The last thing I remembered was Ganzi with his arms tightly wrapped around me, a shield against the storm.

I awoke to the sharp smells of ginger and candle wax. Blinking, I took in the small room: a familiar red armchair, a scratched but clean desk covered with my papers from the university. I was in my room – well, the room I had stayed in for the past two months. The lodging belonged to Gwanda, the village’s assistant chief. Gwanda, the mother of Ganzi. Ganzi, who must’ve saved me from ….

Tsunami. The screams, the loss, the roar of the wind and waves came rushing out from the recesses of my mind, demanding attention and response.

I leaped out of bed and winced as pain jolted through my injured leg. Taking a deep breath, I moved as fast as I could, almost tripping over a neat stack of my clothes that Gwanda had washed and folded. After I’d searched the house and found no one, I slid on my pink flip-flops and went outside.

A dismal sight greeted my eyes. The air was heavy, drooping over the village. The sky was gray, the sand muddy, and there was not a single undamaged building. But the sounds that rang through the air were not those of weeping, but hammering and working, wood planks scraping against stone.

I spotted Ganzi repairing the roof of a nearly decimated house, feet on the highest rung of the precariously propped ladder.

“Ganzi. What happened?”

My arrival surprised him. He jerked backward, almost falling, and stared down at me as if I had just shown up at a party, unexpected, unannounced, with the invitation in my hand.

“Well, after you were sucked under, the tide receded, and I got us back to the house. You passed out; you have been unconscious for almost a day now. You got a fever from swallowing seawater. My mother cooled your temperature with ice, which reminds me, she told me to tell her when you woke up. I guess I’ll go find her.” Ganzi spoke methodically, as if he were giving someone a list of steps to follow. He turned back to the roof.

“That’s it? What is everyone doing now? Why does no one seem sad? How many were lost?” The words tumbled from my throat.

He glanced at me. “All the men are working to repair the damage. If we do not clean it up quickly, the wood will rot and then all will be a disaster. The others are trying to salvage what is left of the food and water.” He hammered more nails, composing a dull rhythm. Thump, thump, crack. Thump, tap, thump, thump, crack.

“You still haven’t answered my questions. How many are gone? Why is no one acting sad? Why is no one crying?” I inquired desperately.

Again he swung to face me. This time, anger clouded his eyes. The new look was unfamiliar and transformed his face into a stern mask, older than it was with his heart-lifting smile.

“There is work to be done – not a second to waste, and crying over people who are lost to the sea is a waste of time. Also, they would not appreciate it if they knew we had been idling hopelessly weeping instead of productively working.”

His words threatened to pull me into the swampy ground. Somehow they upset me more than all the loss. People, children – his little sister – had died. How could he and the village be so heartless? How could everyone go on acting like this tragedy never happened?

Tears brimming in my eyes, I shouted, “You’re crazy! You all are. I can’t believe you’d spend the entire day working to fix something that will ultimately be damaged, instead of mourning your own sister!” My voice built up strength, a steady crescendo that reached a pinnacle of fury. “How do you call yourself human? How do–”

“Enough,” cut in a voice.

The interruption didn’t come from Ganzi, whose lips were pursed in a tight line. I spun around to see Gwanda closing the distance between us.

“Enough arguing. You are shouting so loud that the man on the moon can hear your words. You will wake the sleeping children.”

I knew I would explode if I stood there one moment longer. My mind went blank and my surroundings blurred as I ran past the builders and damaged houses, down the shore, my feet pounding against the rocks.

I ran and ran, wishing that I could disappear into a place of my own, a spot in the universe where the entire village and its noises were nonexistent, somewhere I could unleash all my anger and confusion and frustration and where no one would be there to care.

Reaching a secluded stretch of shore, I stopped. I did not collapse onto the rocks. Instead I noticed the sea, serene and simple. The water around my feet was shallow. Thick, gritty sand squished between my toes as I tentatively waded deeper, farther, toward a blue horizon. I tilted my head toward the darkening sky, feeling as if I were the only lucid being left in an unpredictable world.

I floated in another universe from the people of the village, from Ganzi. I thought about his stoic, almost robotic response. Could it be that our thoughts, our emotions, our entire perspectives were truly different? His voice had been sharp and direct, a straightforward declaration of what was to be done. He’d said that repairing the houses and salvaging fresh water and food were more important than mourning his own people. What could be more important than grieving the end of so many lives?

I stood in the foam for an immeasurable amount of time, pondering his words, playing with them, flipping them so that I began to see them backwards. I kept asking myself why. Why did this have to happen? Why was Ganzi acting so indifferent? Why did I feel like I didn’t belong here? Why, why, why ….

The breeze caught my hair in a torrent of frustration, tangling the strands, desperate to fly free. As the low roar of water thundered in my ears, I gazed out at an open view of the sea.

The sunset no longer a reflection in my eyes, I began the trek back to the village, back to Ganzi. Aware that everyone must be asleep, I carefully picked my way over the rocks. I had almost reached the low row of houses when I heard a small sound from near the shore, silhouettes against the ocean. My feet sinking in the cold sand, I moved quietly around the rocks to find the source of the sound.

There sat a man with the well-built body of a builder. His body was slumped, his posture limp. He bowed behind the fortress of the rocks, hunched into a ball as if all the life and energy keeping him upright had died. I stayed there for a while, watching his shaking shoulders, listening to him weeping out feathery sorrows, the rush of the waves a background song that played unceasingly. The man shifted ever so slightly, tilting his glassy eyes toward the stars. Unbroken moonlight beamed down upon him, illuminating the high, prominent cheekbones that I knew so well.