What it's like to be buried alive

Dhaka, Bangladesh (CNN) -- "Save me!" a man's voice cries out in the darkness. "Please save me!"

"I can't see you," she replies. "I don't know where you are."

"Save me! Please save me!" the voice pleads again.

"I want to," she says. "But I can't move either."

She loses consciousness.

When she wakes, the voice is gone.

In that cramped, dark grave under 700 tons of concrete and steel, she is all alone.

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The concept of purgatory isn't familiar to most Bangladeshis.

But the way Reshma describes her 17 harrowing days --buried underground in pitch-black darkness as the voices around her faded away, as sweltering days bled into humid nights, as she questioned whether she was in this world or the next -- it's an apt one.

"I'd crawl, tire and sleep. I would wake up and crawl again," Reshma recounted, her voice barely audible, as she spoke to CNN on Tuesday.

It was one of her first extended one-on-one interviews since rescuers pulled her out alive last week from the rubble of a collapsed building.

"I told God, 'Take me, if that's your will. If not, then save me.

" 'But don't leave me here like this.' "

For more on this CNN story, click here.