Aftermath Read Count : 85

Category : Books-Non-Fiction

Sub Category : Biography

Story 1


"Aftermath"


Dewi stepped out of her university dorm to the sounds of bicycles and motorbikes whizzing by. The campus was typically lively in the morning. Plus, it was also exam week; tension was thick in the air. The cloud formations were gorgeous that morning, like cotton candy. She was so busy admiring the clouds, she stepped right into a puddle, her feet submerged in dirty muddy waters causing a small pool inside her shoes. As she walked by the bicycle shed, she noticed Yati on her bicycle, ready to move. She waved for Yati to go ahead without her but her friend waited. 


"Why don't you go first, I just need a minute to call mom."


Yati gave her a knowing look. "We're not kids anymore, Dewi. You should stop playing around calling your mom." But her friendly advice fell on deaf ears. Yati shook her head as she watched the expressionless look on Dewi's face. 


Dewi's stomach was churning. Her palms sweaty. She wasn't sure if she was ready for this - her final English paper. She muttered a short prayer and turned back towards the building to ring her mom from the comfort of her bed. 


Dewi had lost her whole family during the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami on 26 December 2004. Her mother had sent her to her grandfather's house for a week as it was the school holidays. Her older siblings and parents remained in Kampung Lampuuk, right by the beach that was soon to become known all over the world. The aerial photograph captured by a News helicopter that had sprawled all over the news and newspapers, the one of the single mosque that survived while everything for miles around was wiped out - that was her village. Her grandfather's house was further inland, closer to the mountains, a few miles away from Lampuuk. 


She could still recall that fateful morning when the incident occurred. It was around 8am when they heard a commotion. Her grandfather ran down the steps of his traditional Acheh wooden house on stilts. 


"The water is rising.... run to the mountains!" screamed one of the neighbours. 


She had never seen so many people crowding the streets, running and screaming. It was madness. Little kids her age were laughing with glee, sensing some kind of adventure in the air, oblivious to the gravity of the situation. Excited and a little scared, Dewi ran into the house, grabbed her tattered princess doll which she named 'Putri', and went back to the doorway. Her grandfather leapt up the stairs and grabbed her hand. "Quick, Dewi, get down!" he hurried her down the rattling steps. 


There was complete pandemonium. Everyone just panicked. Cars were driving by and some stopped to pick up random passengers. An old sedan pulled over just in front of Dewi and her grandfather and its back door swung open. 


"Get in quick, the Big Wave has hit!"


Her grandfather pushed her into the car, onto some lady's lap. Unfortunately, there was not enough room for him in the car. He shut the car door. "Go first," he shouted from outside the car. "God will take care of you."


As the car slowly pulled away, Dewi wasn't excited anymore. She was terrified. Her heart leapt up to her throat as she grabbed the door handle. But the lady whose lap she was sitting on, wouldn't let her open the door. She told Dewi not to worry and that her grandfather would soon catch up with them later. 


The lady lied. He never caught up. That was the last time she saw him. 


Dewi met Yati and Henry up in the mountain. They were there for weeks, or maybe more, she wasn't sure exactly. They were not allowed to go down the mountain. The whole area below was flooded, they were told. The Big Wave had destroyed all the villages by the sea, and the water continued to rise inland for miles. There was no electricity. From the mountain they would see the whole area below was pitch black at night. It was eerie. 


To survive on the mountain, they lived in makeshift huts made of branches and leaves, drank rainwater and ate leaves, bananas, papayas and whatever they could find or whatever some adult managed to get from the village. Dewi knew some of the adults there but none of them knew where her grandfather was. And when she asked about her parents or siblings, they just looked away. 


"Could it be...?" she wondered. "Are they gone forever?" It all didn't make sense to her. 


Yati and Henry couldn't find their families either. The three of them decided to stick together and be one family. They vowed to look out for one another and have each other's back. 


Yati was saved by a foam rubber, spring mattress that was the rage in 2003. Newly imported from China, anyone who could afford to buy one, did. It turned out, those mattresses float and hundreds of kids were saved after the tsunami because they managed to climb on top the floating mattresses. After the worst of the storm was over, the kids were found huddled, hungry and cold, but alive, floating on those mattresses. 


Henry said he saw the Big Wave but he couldn't remember anything after it hit. He was badly cut and bruised when he woke up, carried by a man he didn't know, and brought to the mountain where they were. Up there, it seemed like everyone had lost everybody and everything. Dewi couldn't understand it and she didn't think the adults understood either. 


When they were finally told they could go down the mountain, they didn't know what to expect. It didn't even smell like home anymore. The floodwaters had receded, leaving a trail of rot and slime. Dead animals, sewage, uprooted trees, and even unrecognizable mangled human remains were to be uncovered for weeks, even months. The devastation, the flatness, the debris.... it was like God had taken the world and vigorously shaken it upside down before laying it flat again. 


Dewi, Yati and Henry were taken with some other kids to a school-cum-orphanage. The place was a mess, but they were told that was the best option for them until things settled down. Choice wasn't a luxury available to them. They stayed in that place and tried to make the best out of a bad situation. They voiced out their need to visit Kampung Lampuuk; their home, and were told to be patient. 


A few weeks later, they joined a group of adults who were headed that way. It seemed like the whole of Acheh was still in a daze. They could do just about anything and no one cared. There were no rules yet. Everyone was preoccupied with their own mess - their own loss and pain. 


The trio started walking towards Kampung Lampuuk one day and part of the way someone picked them up in a truck. The ride was slow and bumpy. Most of the tarred roads had fallen apart although the debris had been cleared to the sides. They were cramped into the backseat of the truck along with a few adults. Dewi's T-shirt was soaked in sweat from the tropical heat and from anxiety. She noticed a lot of foreigners around who looked like the people she saw on TV. A lot of them were in uniform; some military, and others she didn't recognise. Volunteers started flowing in from all over the world. 


When they got to Kampung Lampuuk, they could barely recognize a thing. They struggled to find any familiar landmarks. Her school was gone and the houses wiped out. There was just the big mosque. She was in shock. She heard sniffles and turned to see tears rolling down Yati's face. Henry was kicking angrily at the debris. A sense of helplessness enveloped her. Then she remembered the last words her grandfather said to her, that God would take care of them. Her spirit lifted for a moment. She looked around her and saw some broken telephones in a pile of debris. An idea struck her. She picked up a broken blue phone and handed it to Henry. 


"We should call our parents," she said, as she dialled some made-up numbers and started speaking on the phone. "Mom, it's Dewi. How are you, mom? Are you in Heaven? Is dad okay? What are you guys doing? Are there toys there? And chocolates?"


Henry glared at her and threw the phone to the ground as he ran off. Yati picked it up, dialled her own mother and walked further away, perching herself on the bumper of an overturned car. She was soon laughing and talking animatedly on the phone. 


Dewi smiled to herself as she recalled that memory. Henry came around in due course, but he remained angry and bitter for years. The three of them were raised in that school-cum-orphanage as orphans. But they are all family, really. They share the blood of Adam, and the tears of the tsunami. 


Dewi will not lie, just like Yati and Henry, she spent her fair share of crying and kicking furniture. Some days were better than others. Losing everyone and everything she knew at one go, it was like her heart had been ripped out of her body, trampled on and returned back to her. She would never be the same again. She would never be quite whole. The pain, it stops her breathing at times. There is not an adequate English translation to describe her pain. 'Heartache' or 'heartbreak' doesn't even come close to describe it. 


"But don't get it wrong," she quickly injected when she was telling me her story, "life at the orphanage was as good as it could be." Abuyya and Ummi, their new 'parents', were warm and kind. The building that housed the orphans were gradually fixed and expanded over the years after the tsunami. About 50 of them lived in that building. They rose to the rooster crowing before dawn, performed their Subuh (morning) prayers, made up their bunk beds before breakfast and spent most of the morning in class. Afternoons were spent mainly doing chores around the dorm, their Quran lessons with Ummi, and playing outdoors. Abuyya and Ummi, or occasionally some NGO's or sponsors, would take them on field trips. Dewi's favourite field trips were the picnics at the beach. Some of the kids were scared of the ocean after the tsunami, understandably so, but she was somehow more intrigued and attracted to it. She loved the scratchy feeling of the sand slipping between her toes and the smell of the salty sea breeze. She would secretly gaze longingly at the waves, half expecting to see her mom and dad step out of the foam, laughing and waving at her. She knew it was wishful thinking but still, a girl can hope. 


Dewi still played the telephone game at times, calling her mom when she missed her. Not actually seeing the bodies of her mom, dad, grandfather and the rest of her family made it feel like maybe they had just gone away for a long vacation, that they hadn't actually died. As they got older, Yati stopped playing the game and said that Dewi should stop too. 


But Dewi couldn't stop. She didn't want to. The telephone game, to her, was her way of holding onto her loved ones. She knew it was stupid to use a broken phone and pretend to be talking to her mother but she just couldn't help it. So, she started sneaking away when she wanted to call her mom, or hid in the bedroom, or waited until everyone had gone to sleep. In her phone conversations, she would proudly tell her mom about the Math exam where she had scored 91 percent. She would tell her mom how her bunkmate Seri snores at night and talks in her sleep, and she would tell her mom how she had sprained her ankle while trying to slam a smash like the famous Indonesian badminton player, Taufik Hidayat in a game of badminton. She also told her mom about the scholarship she received to study English in university, and also about Rudy, the clever boy with gentle brown eyes in her faculty who always sat in the front row in class; the boy she's sweet on. Her calls to her mother would sometimes last for hours as she poured her heart out to her mom. 


As she snapped back to herself, she realised that this was it. The final exam of her last year in university. As she crawled into bed and pulled the blanket over her head, she confessed to her mom that she was nervous about the exam. In truth, she didn't need to be. She had been doing well all this while, and the 'Teach for Indonesia' program where she had completed her internship had already offered her a job teaching English in the rural areas of Java. Life was good, really really good. Rudy had also been accepted into the same program and told her yesterday that he plans to introduce her to his parents at graduation. Butterflies seemed to be somersaulting in her belly, or maybe it was more like synchronised swimming. She has so much to look forward to. 


When she made her call, she told her mom that this would be her last phone call to her. No more hiding under the covers. No more fake telephone calls. It was time for her to grow up. She would continue to pray for her mother and she would hug her mother again in Heaven someday. But for now, she wanted to share her story. The story of the tsunami kids. And she wanted to tell everyone that God is merciful and beautiful and that He always takes care of us. Always. 


In Islam, there is a saying of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), "Blessed are the affairs of the Believer. If things are difficult, he is patient. And if things are joyful, he is grateful."

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