When Sultan left his wife Zeynab at their ground-floor shop in Eastleigh’s Isli area to head to the mosque for Friday afternoon prayers, he had no idea it would be the last time he would see her standing.
Minutes later, an 18-storey building came crashing down around her.
Upon hearing the news, Sultan ran back across the road, only to find a mountain of shattered concrete where the building had once stood.
“I rushed and crossed the road after learning of what happened and when I arrived, there was no longer a building standing there. An underground entrance led to our shop. The building was already down but I knew the side our shop was located,” he told journalists, his voice breaking.
With no sign of Zeynab and rescue efforts still underway, Sultan eventually returned to the mosque to do the only thing left to him: pray.
Zeynab later recounted that the collapse began without warning. She initially mistook the deafening noise for a nearby altercation before realising the building itself was caving in.
By some fortune, she found herself wedged in a narrow gap between two refrigerators inside her shop, a cramped pocket of space that would be her entire world for the next 30 hours.
On Saturday evening, rescuers finally reached her and pulled her out alive and uninjured. A second survivor, Victor Onyango, was also brought out of the rubble, both of them having endured more than a day buried under debris with little hope from those waiting above.
Sultan broke down completely at the sight of his wife. Tearful and barely able to speak, he said he was at a loss for words and could not begin to explain his gratitude.
“It feels like a miracle, but we are waiting for another miracle by seeing our brothers and sisters who are also trapped being removed alive,” said a resident at the scene, capturing the mood of a community still holding its breath.
The collapse, which occurred on the afternoon of Friday, 23 October, left many families in anguish as loved ones remained unaccounted for.
Zeynab and Victor’s rescues offered a rare moment of relief amid the grief, a reminder that survival, against all odds, was still possible.
