We found her three weeks later sitting complacently cross-legged with her mother in the hot, steamy shade of a blue tent built by a relief organization. Hundreds just like it haphazardly join together on the lawn of a local television station set on higher ground in the town of Banda Aceh. Not surprisingly, people here are drawn to higher ground.

Laundry hangs from satellite dishes. Older people lean in doorways staring blankly into space still in shock. Children play between canvass walls as if they’re on a camping trip. Some survivors find the energy to do chores, trying to make their new, indefinitely temporary dwellings feel more like a home.

Most tents house up to 100 people. Dessy is lucky. She shares her 10-by-15-foot plot with about 20 other people, mostly her family, except her grandparents whom she lost to the sea. Inside her tent is clean-- shoes stacked at the door keep loose dirt from invading the area where they sleep, emergency relief supplies diligently organized set in rows along the walls.

She stands and greets us. She is about 5-2, thin but healthy. Her head is covered by a traditional black Muslim veil more ornate than the typical silky wrap. She’s 21, but looks 16. Despite witnessing unfathomable horror, her eyes are innocent. They express a sublime happiness even when she’s not smiling, as if she’s somehow made peace with her fate. They are framed by oval, wire-rimmed gold glasses befitting of a computer science student at a local university. She was set to graduate next year but her school was physically washed away and her professors killed. She’s not sure what her immediate future holds. For now, she said, she will stay at the tent for a while.

After hearing the story of her harrowing escape, Dessy pauses at our question but then emphatically nods and agrees to go back to her house for the first time since the tragedy and physically walk us through that day.

The streets of Banda Aceh five miles from the shoreline are like any other third-world city center. Open air markets sell fresh local produce, traveling butchers hang newly killed meats, scooters and beat up cars clog signal-free intersections. It feels as if nothing has happened to this town until we turn off the main road onto the street that leads into Dessy’s neighborhood, or what’s left of it.

She sits in the back of our rented SUV and stares out the window emotionless as we tenuously roll over planks and debris that used to be houses. The neighborhood looks like it used to be a nice, middle-class community consisting mostly of two-story, four bedroom homes. We pass a mass grave on the left where 93 bodies have recently been buried. It’s marked only by fallen branches purposely stuck vertically into freshly dug earth.

The SUV comes to a stop and we get out.

“It’s sad,” Dessy simply, softly says as she walks carefully in flip flops. She approaches an empty space next to a crumbling structure. She points at the structure. “That used to be my neighbors. I don’t know where they are now.”

The empty space was her home. The foundation is barely distinguishable under random rubble. Most of the mess had been washed there from miles away.

The panoramic view is utter destruction. Words are difficult to find to describe its essence. The striking part is how clean everything is. Usually, chaos such as this is covered by soot and burnt embers-- death by fire. But when an area is washed away, an eerie faded feeling takes over as if the town was put into an industrial-strength washing machine and suffered through a thousand spin cycles.

Dessy points toward the ocean, which is about three miles to the northwest.

“After we felt the shake I ran outside and saw a huge wall of water about 500 meters away rushing toward me,” she says stoically. “We just ran. Left everything behind and ran.”

She explains that if she went back to find her belongings before she fled she probably would have lost her life. Now, almost nothing recognizable remains and she doesn’t seem to feel any attachment to the few personal affects that linger.

A teapot teeters on a board. It used to be hers, she says, but doesn’t pick it up. A clock stuck in the sand has stopped exactly at the time the wave hit. She steps over it, not looking down.

Walking around with Dessy it’s hard to make sense of any of this destruction. I search for reasons, complex science-based answers. I try to understand how Dessy is so accepting of her fate. But for Dessy it’s simple: Allah, God, she says. I envy such a submissive faith in a higher power. It affords her an acceptable explanation to the cause of this tragedy; it powers her soul forward toward an unsure future.

We continue walking the grounds, taking pictures and rolling video trying somehow to capture and communicate what’s happened here. But, we have to cut short our time, it’s past 2 pm and Dessy explains she must make it back to camp in order to pray. To respect her faith we quickly assemble back into the SUV.

As we drive off I turn around a snap off a couple last shots. Dessy doesn’t look back.

-30-