The Secret of Survival

She hugs the precious basket like a newborn. She runs through the flood, out from the rubble of the roof. The child behind her, crying, terrified, dazed. The flood has risen higher, it pounds faster, sweeps more fiercely, more deadly every moment. The woman throws the precious basket into the flood, bent over in the torrent of mud, she snatches the child from the claws of the wave. She sets the child on her shoulders, the woman: step by step she wrestles with the rushing water: toward a hidden, unseen shore...