At 11:30 a.m. Monday, Georgia State University economics professor Grace O got a phone call from her husband, telling her smoke was rising from the tony Villagio mall in Doha, Qatar, where their 2 1/2-year-old daughter Zeinah was enrolled in daycare.
O rushed to the mall, which was surrounded by a phalanx of police officers. She said she saw no firefighters on the scene. Nor did anyone seem to take her concerns seriously.
It would be four hours before 33-year-old O and her husband Zaier Aouani would learn of their daughter's fate. They buried Zeinah on Wednesday in Tunisia.
As the mall burned, O said, authorities outside told her, "‘Your kid is safe inside.' That's what they say." All this time, she said, "there's black smoke coming out."
"At the hospital when we went to the mortuary, they showed us pictures of the dead kids," O recalled Thursday in an exclusive interview from Tunisia via Skype with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"All the kids from the nursery were dead. They asked me, ‘Is this your kid? Is this your kid?'"
"My kid was the last one," she said.
Nineteen people, including 13 children at the daycare center inside the Villagio, died in the fire.
Sprinkler systems malfunctioned, according to news reports, and rescue crews struggled without blueprints of the Gulf state's largest mall. The mall's owner has been arrested, along with the owner of the child care facility and three other mall officials.
But O and Aouani said firefighters and police are also liable.
"Fire can happen," said O, who was in Doha with her daughter to visit Aouani, who teaches economics at Qatar University. "This death of kids and teachers could have been prevented. The death of everyone could have been prevented. There is such incompetence that it makes me angry right now. But I'm so sad. So sad."
O said it was 12:15 p.m. -- nearly an hour after smoke was first spotted emanating from the mall -- before firefighters arrived. In the meantime, O said she frantically warned police officers there was a nursery inside.
"Please go and check, or let me go in check," she implored them. "I talk to literally hundreds of police guys."
They kept passing her off, directing to another part of the mall which she described as "bigger than Lenox" -- referring to the Buckhead mall.
"Everyone had a different answer," O said. One mall official told her everyone was already outside.
Rescue crews arrived but demonstrated little urgency, she said. Desperate, she said she offered one firefighter a bribe.
"I even told one firefighter, ‘I can give you money,'" she said. "Please go check the nursery. They just looked at me like a crazy person who doesn't know what's going on.
"Some firefighters, they worked hard," O said. "But there were so many other firefighters doing nothing."
By 1:15 p.m. O and Aouani found each other outside the mall. By then, bodies were being lifted from the roof.
"I saw bodies of small kids coming out," O said.
"They were completely covered," added Aouani, 38. "They were already dead."
The rescue effort was deliberate, according to O. Again, no one seemed aware of the depth of the tragedy.
"There was only one ladder going up to the roof," she said. "This entire process was so slow."
They did not know whether Zeinah was among the dead but feared the worst. Officials offered no information, Aouani said. Finally, around 3:30 p.m., a reporter on the scene directed them to the hospital where, he told them, eight of the children had been taken.
They recognized the toddlers in the photographs from a graduation ceremony held at Gympanzee the previous Thursday. Zeinah was one of 12 children who were regulars at the daycare, having spent the previous two weeks there, according to her parents.
"I remember all the kids faces. And they're all dead," O said.
Zeinah's body had no burn marks, they said, another sign the girl's death could have been prevented.
The family's nightmare continued the day after the fire. They described a sea of red tape, minded by insensitive bureaucrats, as they tried to leave the country with their daughter's body.
"You don't feel like there's anyone that cares," Aouani said. "At least you can show some sympathy."
As they prepared to depart on their flight to Tunisia, Zaier received a phone call telling him they would not be allowed to take Zeinah's body.
"There is a document missing," he was told. "At the end, when I describe to the person, this is not fine, he said, ‘Okay, okay.'"
"How much incompetence do you need to get to this point?' Aouani said.
Though the Qatar government has promised a thorough inquiry, Aouni is skeptical.
"It's not going to happen," he said. "It's more a PR campaign after the accident then a serious investigation or anything."
The couple plans to return to Doha after spending a few more days with Aouani's parents in Tunisia. They plan to return to Atlanta after collecting his possessions there.
They're planning a memorial service for Zeinah here sometime in July. Zaier and Grace had spent much of their three-year marriage apart because of work and, before their arrival in early May, he hadn't seen his wife or daughter in three months.
"Each time I go back home, she gets taller. And this time, she gained one inch at least," Aouani said.
The separation was "very difficult," he said, "but you know ,there was always this hope that I would be able to go back, that we would be able to get together. With Zeinah around, I had all the incentives to try hard to get back to the U.S."
Each had recently received their Green cards and were eager to find jobs in the same city. Zeinah was excited when they told her they'd soon be together for good.
"She loves to sing. She loves dancing. She loves to read books," said Zeinah's mother, still using the present tense when speaking of her almond-eyed daughter with the big smile. "She speaks English, Korean, a few Arabic and French words already. She's really beautiful. Wherever we go to, everyone just stares at her. She's so beautiful."
O said she was rarely apart from Zeinah. Neighbors in their Old Fourth Ward apartment complex said they had grown accustomed to seeing O pushing her daughter's stroller on their nightly walks.
"We do everything together. Literally everything," O said.
They hope their daughter's death will force change upon Qatar's emergency response system, along with the oil-rich state's apparently lax safety standards.
"I hope this will alarm the entire world," O said. "Qatar is a paradise. A lot of money. They have the capability of equipping, of not having an incompetent police system. There is no excuse for what happened."
-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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