Sania Bachaya

The sound of rushing water still haunts me. It’s not a roar—it’s quieter than that, insistent, like it knows a secret it won’t share. That night, just over a year ago in Swat, Pakistan, it had the last word. Thirty people drowned, and I, Sania, at 21, was pulled back into life when all I wanted was to sink beneath the surface and forget everything.

The fisherman told me later he’d seen the bus teeter on the edge before falling. He didn’t hear screams; they were swallowed by the water and the darkness. Somehow, I clawed my way out of that submerged tomb, choking and gasping, pulled by the riverbank’s promise of solid ground.

When the ambulance came, my body shook with the cold, but my mind burned with guilt. My groom had smiled at me hours before, oblivious to my reluctance. His family had looked at me like a trophy they’d won. A year of quiet pressure from my own parents, and I’d given in, because saying “no” to them felt like defiance against the weight of tradition itself.

I had whispered a bitter prayer that morning: Let something stop this wedding. The prayer came true, but not the way I had imagined.

At the hospital, there were no physical wounds, just an emptiness so vast it threatened to swallow me. My mother sat at my bedside, her hands wringing a corner of her dupatta, and my father stood silent, his shoulders heavy with grief. “Allah spared you,” they said, their voices breaking.

The community called me blessed, though I felt cursed. It took months for the whispers to stop: She survived when no one else did. Why her?

My family now listens when I speak, a grace I didn’t expect from tragedy. I’ve told them I need time, maybe years, to decide what I want for myself.

The Swat River flows on, indifferent. Every day, I pass it and hear the secrets it still holds. I look at its depths and wonder if I’ll ever truly understand why I was saved.