When Suratini saw friends from her village carrying nine corpses wrapped in sarongs and blankets down the street in front of her, she could not hold back her tears. ”It was part sadness and part stress,” she says. ”We had been through so much already that day and I could no longer stay in control when the bodies came past on makeshift stretchers. I became hysterical.”
It was at this moment last Saturday afternoon — eight hours after the village of Suren Kulon joined scores of places south of the ancient city of Yogyakarta, on Indonesia’s Java island, to be flattened by a 6,3-magnitude earthquake — that Suratini was photographed. In the picture her face was transfixed with grief and shock and horror. It was an image that was published around the world.
Grieving with her, in the white cap, is Hariyanti, the daughter-in-law of one of the nine victims, village imam Muhammad Sahid. Standing behind them are Mariam, the imam’s younger sister, and her husband, Jahuri.
It was a miracle that Suratini was not among the nine victims she was mourning — among 16 who died in the village — and more than 6 000 now known to have died across the region. The only part of the bed that she was sleeping in when the quake struck at 5.54am that is still visible is its footboard. The rest is buried under a pile of bricks.
”I was woken by the force of the earthquake. But before I could even move the wall behind my head came crashing down on top of me,” Suratini says as she helps sort aid donations at a damaged house, just outside the village, being used as a warehouse. ”The falling wall also knocked a wardrobe on top of me, so I was completely trapped. I couldn’t move at all, so I just cried and cried and screamed and screamed.”
Neighbours say it took 15 minutes for Suratini, a 42-year-old market trader, to be pulled out of the rubble. ”It was my 16-year-old son Irwan Kurnaiwan who saved me,” she said. ”He just kept digging till he got to me.”
Her husband, Percoyo, discovered only half an hour later how close he had been to becoming a widower. ”I had left the house a couple of minutes earlier to go to the rice fields,” he says. ”I had probably got about 200m when the earthquake happened. It was so shocking and so frightening. All the houses collapsed almost immediately, and I heard so many people shouting for help I didn’t think of anything else other than trying to help those who were nearest to me, who I could see and hear were in so much pain.”
Percoyo is convinced that the reason Suratini, who prefers to be called Tini, was able to walk away with only a few scratches and some very large bruises was because he invested in a few iron rods when he built the family home a decade ago. It meant that, unlike all the other houses around his, which completely collapsed, enough bits of wall remained standing to support the roof. ”There is no doubt the house will have to be knocked down,” he said. ”But at least enough of it survived to save Tini’s life.”
Jahuri — the man in the back of the photograph — was not so lucky. His house, directly across the village street from Tini’s, is now about 45cm high. He was trapped in the rubble for 25 minutes. ”I will walk with a limp for a long time, but I give thanks to Allah every day that I am still alive,” he says.
After the photograph was taken, Tini, Jahuri, Mariam and Hariyanti followed the pall-bearers to the village cemetery, surrounded by paddy fields where the rice had been planted only two weeks earlier. It was there that their nine neighbours were buried together in a mass grave. There are no wooden boards identifying who is laid where, let alone headstones giving details of their lives and deaths. The only markers are an anonymous brick for each person taken from the collapsed cemetery wall.
But everyone who was there says they will always remember the order they were laid to rest. ”The first person put in the ground was the imam,” says Syaiful, a labourer who helped prepare the grave, pointing at the first brick. ”Then Erik Jamiri, then Asin, then Mrs Darmal, then the baby Mona, then Ahmad Manneri, then Teguh, then Esmi — another baby — and finally Choyirah.”
No one has any idea when proper gravestones might be bought for them. ”At the moment life is just about survival,” Tini says. ”We are living from one day to the next.”
The simple list on the whiteboard at the ”village warehouse” encapsulates the situation all too starkly. It reads: number of souls 320; houses destroyed 100%; urgently needed: rice, tents, noodles, sanitation equipment, milk, soap, cooking oil, baby milk powder, women’s hygiene items, medicine, vegetables. Someone has scrawled underneath: ”Everything.”
By Wednesday, several kilograms of vegetables, several dozen boxes of noodles and a few sacks of rice had already been distributed. ”They have come from various sources, the government, NGOs, community groups and individuals,” says Amirawati, a student in charge of listing all the goods. ”It’s not going to be enough for very long. But at least it’s better than nothing.” — Guardian Unlimited Â