Notice boards of hope and desperation in Banda Aceh

Santi Soekanto, Contributor/Aceh, santi-soekanto2001@yahoo.com

"We are looking for M. Nizar Zainun, his wife, Setiawati, and their child, Aisyah. Please pray for their safety. If you have any information of their whereabouts, please contact the following numbers."

The notice is written on a piece of paper pinned to a bulletin board at a government office in Banda Aceh, which has been a refugee camp since the tsunami killed more than 100,000 people in the city.

A picture of the missing family accompanies the notice. Thousands of others can be found everywhere in the provincial capital -- on shop and office walls, bridges, lamp posts and any structure still standing in a town decimated by the disaster.

The notices speak of the hope, that somehow, someone will be able to tell the writers their loved ones are still alive, or at worst, that their bodies have been found and identified -- among thousands of blackened corpses that still litter the streets.

Many of these notices will never be answered and the town is still a state of shock. For days after the disaster hit on Dec. 26, countless survivors walked around in a daze, searching for their loved ones among the rubble and mud and dirt that once was a city.

Red-rimmed eyes swollen with too much crying, they lifted sheets, clothing or anything that had been used to cover the multitude of dead from the flies.

They tried to recognize a familiar face among the bloated corpses, hoping against hope. Often, they were disappointed.

They would continue, walking and lifting the cover that shielded yet another dead body.

Among so much sadness there were also happy stories, such as the one about Teungku Raihan Iskandar, a local political activist, who was separated from one of his children for several days after the disaster.

It was a harrowing time but he kept on working to help the wounded and the homeless, and relayed through the Jakarta-based Elshinta radio station countless requests for information about missing people. He continued to pray for the safe return of his child, and was finally reunited.

The huge scale of the disaster means, however, that there are far more sad stories. Sayed Muhammad remembered hugging his three-month-pregnant wife who dropped him off for a meeting of Muslim intellectuals at a local mosque. "Don't worry so much about the earthquake, everything will be fine," Sayed said, kissing her goodbye.

She left. Minutes later, Sayed thought he heard thunder -- it was actually the noise of the giant waves slamming into Banda Aceh and crushing much of the western coast. He survived the disaster as but his wife and two young children were nowhere to be found.

Later he tried to return home, only to find that home was unrecognizable. Like so many others, he fought rising desperation and walked for many kilometers, trying to find his family, searching through what was formerly his neighborhood.

He searched until he finally learned to accept that, perhaps, his family was no more.

He fought the tears, telling himself that if Allah had taken back what He had given him, he would only pray that one day -- in this world or in the hereafter -- that he would be reunited with his wife and children.

He then busied himself, opening a temporary school for some 350 children at a refugee camp in Indrapuri, Banda Aceh.

Only once did he weep: When watching the final humiliation of the dead, when their bodies were thrown onto an open truck and dumped into mass graves.

"Why are people being treated like animals? To be dumped like that, to have to go without prayers being said over their bodies, without the shroud (as befits a Muslim)?" his voice cracked, tears streaming down his face.

Raihan was fortunate not to have to post a notice. Sayed did not feel the need to do so. But thousands of others continue to cling to any shred of faith they can find, to try to communicate to their missing loved ones that they are waiting, and praying, and hoping.