'We never know when our time is up'

'We never know when our time is up'

Ruslan Sangadji, Banda Aceh, Aceh

Usually addressed as Ibu Ina, Inayah Sa'adudin, the wife of the
former North Aceh regent, has her own story about coping with the
earthquake and the tsunami that recently hit Aceh.

It is about how she saved herself, but also about how, driving
the truck herself, she carried away dead bodies found around her
house.

Ibu Ina, the mother of Nailini Tarmidzi 17, Raburrayan 15, M.
Fakhri 12 and M. Haikal 8, told The Jakarta Post that on Dec. 26
she and her entire family had fled for safety to Dayah Tgk Chie'
Omar Diyan Islamic Boarding School in Krueng Lam Kareung.
Indrapuri, Banda Aceh.

Accompanied by her husband, she returned a few days later to
their house on Jl. Todak in Lampriet, Banda Aceh, the capital of
Aceh, which is also known as the Veranda of Mecca.

About 50 meters from her house, she was surprised to find
building debris as virtually all the houses in her neighborhood
had been destroyed. Surprise, however, soon turned to shock, then
horror, when she saw a great number of blackened dead bodies
lying scattered along the road leading to their house.

Unable to do much about this, she could only put her trust in
God and try her best not to cry. Other residents were busy
looking for family members and relatives among the scattered
corpses.

It was her husband who suggested they should carry away the
dead bodies and bury them, and Inayah set about procuring a truck
with which to transport the corpses.

Finally, she located a truck that belonged to one of her
brothers-in-law. She drove the truck to her house, and without
fear or any feeling of repugnance, loaded the dead bodies into
the truck and took them to Lambaro, now a mass burial site.

"I drove the truck myself to Lambaro and my husband followed
on his motorbike," she said, the memory that many of the dead
bodies were those of children bringing tears to her eyes.

After driving the corpses to Lambaro, she left the truck there
as it was out of fuel. Together with her husband, she returned
home. When they arrived, they found their house still standing.
Not even a single dead body or a piece of wood was found in the
yard.

Even the chairs on the terrace were in their usual position.
Of course mud covered the floor of the house but nothing inside
the house was broken. Inayah could not explain why this was so.
She only said that every day she sat on the chair, reading the
Koran. Even after the earthquake hit the area, she sat on the
chair, reciting Asmaul Husna (a passage from the Koran).

Early in the morning before the disaster, Inayah said she had
a bad omen about Banda Aceh, her birthplace. That is why she
decided not to go out that Sunday.

However, her third child, M. Fakhri, asked her to take him to
the soccer field and she complied. She and Fakhri later went to
the house of one of Fakhri's classmates. They were going to play
football together.

While they were on the way, there was an earthquake. The car
she was driving rocked. She stopped the car and, arms tightly
wrapped around Fakhri and his friend, she left the car. The three
of them sat on the road. When the earthquake was over, she
decided to return home. Back home, she found her husband and
their three children were reciting Asmaul Husna.

Suddenly, it was very noisy outside. People rushed out and
shouted wildly: "Water! ... water! ... water!... . Inayah and her
family decided to move to an Islamic boarding school in Indrapuri
for safety.

They had driven but a few meters when someone stopped the car
and asked them to help his old mother because the old women could
no longer walk. They took her into the car. To their
astonishment, ten other people got into the car as well.

Meanwhile, seawater had covered part of Banda Aceh. The water
was as high as the car's wheels. Driving through a knee-deep
flood, they finally arrived at the Islamic boarding school.
"Thank God, we are all safe," she said upon arriving there.

A day before the tsunami struck, she had a feeling that
something bad would occur. With her husband, she addressed at
least 800 students of Syiah Kuala University, Banda Aceh, in a
program about Emotional Spiritual Quotient (ESQ). They were
giving the students something to contemplate.

She said: "We never know when God will take us. We will never
know whether we can still see tomorrow." She remembers uttering
those two sentences but does not know whom of the participating
students was spared.

Now she can only hope that this major natural calamity was the
last to happen in her birthplace. She also hopes that this
disaster can arouse in the community a desire to jointly rebuild
Aceh.

"Nobody can rebuild Aceh but the Acehnese themselves. That's
why we must always foster our togetherness and discard
differences," she said.