Brothers in Arms

On the morning of Dec. 26 last year, Jake and Aleksis Zarins were lying in their beds at the Rock House hotel in Unawatuna, Sri Lanka, nursing heavy post-Christmas hangovers. For the past month the English brothers had been lounging around the palm-lined village on the country's southwest coast. At 9:25 a.m. the Indian Ocean tsunami hit the tropical retreat, and that long holiday came to an abrupt end. "I heard a loud rumbling outside the hotel," Jake remembers. "I looked out of my window and there was water as far as I could see." He woke Aleksis, who was stunned...