2010 — A Boy Survives the Tripoli Air Disaster

On May 12, 2010, an Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330 arriving in Tripoli broke apart just short of the runway. Of 104 people aboard, 103 were killed. One passenger lived: nine-year-old Ruben van Assouw, a Dutch boy flying home with his family, pulled alive from the wreckage against every expectation that morning.

The sole survivor was treated for broken legs and eventually reunited with his grandmother. Around him lay a grief too large for any single story to carry, yet his survival changed the telling of that day. A miracle amid the wreckage turned grief into something else as well: a fragile, stubborn hope.