Article January 26, 2004 Issue

'God kept me alive'

Inspiration from an Iranian survivor

By Channing Walker

Shahr-Banou Mazandarani , you take my breath away. I look at you, pictured everywhere as I write this—on the computer screen, in the newspaper, all over CNN—and wonder if in all my life I've ever seen such serenity mingled with so much grit.

I ask myself, as millions around the globe must be asking now, How did you do it? How could you, a 97-year-old Iranian woman, survive under the rubble of the devastating earthquake in Bam, Iran, for more than a week? How could anyone, no matter what his or her age, do that?

What unfathomable inner resources sustained you then, through the bitterly cold nights and days of deprivation? And what sustains you now, so serene it seems you are somehow untouched, as if beyond the reach of this ordeal?