Sea (23 page)

“The water was more powerful than you can imagine,” Deni answered.

Deni clarified what I was looking at as we drove along, but instead of its usual softness there was an edge in his voice, and I didn’t blame him for being angry. I remembered how I acted after my mom disappeared.

“This empty land used to be villages and huts and markets,” Deni said. “Before, you did not have a view of the ocean from here. Many buildings were in the way. The ocean took everything out to sea like a giant suction.”

“Look at that boat!” I said, pointing to a smaller version of Noah’s Ark flipped completely upside down in a watery sandbank.

“There were so many boats stuck in the sand after the water went back to the sea,” Deni explained. “That one was too big; even the elephants couldn’t move it.”

Azmi said something in his language.

“Azmi and Siti’s father was a fisherman too. He still is. He was one of the lucky ones.” His fist clenched tightly as he met my eye. “Lucky like my father.”

We stopped when we could see the shoreline clearly.

I looked out at the glassy sea. I couldn’t imagine those calm waves rising up the way they did. My heart pounded and I was so relieved when Azmi turned the Rover around at the harbor. We passed more and more debris: logs, twisted pieces of metal, chopped-in-half fishing boats smashed into the sand, more metal, more wood, more junk. “This is clean compared to before,” Deni said quietly, his eyes flashing. “There were bodies everywhere. We had to cover our faces with scarves to hide our noses and mouths from the smells of the decay.”

Just like the article I read back home. One of the pictures I saw of the workers could have been Deni. I didn’t dare mention it.

He stopped talking for a second, remembering. “Me and Azmi worked here.... We carried bodies in from the shore. We did it for days and days, all day long, sometimes long into the night. They were everywhere. Here. There.” He pointed out the other window. “Everywhere were rotting bodies. Women were mourning and screaming and ... most of the bodies could not be ...
apa
?”

My voice cracked. “Identified?”

“Yes.” He nodded, his jaw clenched. “Swollen from the water, they were big and
apa?
Puffed?” He winced like he could still see the brutal images. “And cut up. They took pictures of the bodies and hung them up to be identified before they could be buried in the graves that you see. It was not good.”

I couldn’t stop picturing the hundreds of bodies piled on top of one another, wrapped only in blankets and covered by a mound of dirt. Deni and Azmi, just boys, dragging the decaying bodies around the shore. How could anyone recover from that?

“I’m so sorry, Deni,” I said as he stared straight ahead, a mask of vile memories shrouding his face. And even though I was dying to wrap my arms around him, I didn’t dare. I didn’t know what he’d told his friends about us, who they thought I was to him, and of course, again, it wouldn’t be appropriate.

He faced me. “Why are you sorry? You did nothing wrong.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through all of this. I wish I could have been here to help you.”

He stared into my eyes hard. “I want you to understand. I left my home because I did not want to see. They said, ‘You will have a new life. You can get your education.’ I thought here I had nothing. But I was wrong. This is still my home even if something terrible happened here. If you do not want me to talk about these things, I will not, but please do not be sorry for me.”

I nodded. I hated it when people felt sorry for me too.

Deni said something to Azmi, who turned the music up even louder. Deni stared out the window, remembering a horror I could barely imagine.

“You see this mosque?” Azmi asked me, stopping the car again a few minutes later. “My family was trapped on the roof watching the water rise around us. On that roof is how my family survived.” A white mosque stood alone in a littered field of trash and garbage and metal. It was the only real building for as far as the eye could see. A strip of white canvas tents were lined up across the street.

“Is that a ... refugee camp?” I asked.

Deni nodded. “Azmi and Siti’s family lived there for many months.”

Deni stepped out of the SUV, his voice filled with emotion. “This is the mosque I told you about. After the storm, it was the only thing left. Not even a tsunami could tear it down.”

I remembered the story. “It was a miracle it survived the water.”

His eyes never left the mosque as he spoke to me. I could tell he wanted to be alone but didn’t want to be rude and leave me alone.

“You go on ahead, I’ll catch up,” I said.

Meeting my eyes for a second, he nodded, and I watched him stagger up the concrete steps and disappear into the building, as if this was the end of a long, long journey.

I stood against the car and stretched in the beating sun.

The mosque had an ornate copper roof and open windows that were bulb-shaped like the carvings in the doors at the
pesantren.

I wiped some sweat off my forehead and fluffed my T-shirt. It was even hotter here than in Yogyakarta, and without the breeze from the car windows I felt almost faint. I walked halfway up the steps, following Azmi and Siti to get a closer look at the exterior while being mindful of giving Deni privacy.

The arches carved out of the walls cast shadows on the now-dry floor and I imagined the flood of water rushing through, desperate families dashing for the rooftop.

And then I saw Deni.

He was kneeling on an orange prayer rug, bending forward rhythmically. I’d never seen him do his prayers before.

“I’m going also to pray,” Siti told me. I watched as she took a black skirt out of a barrel and wrapped it around her waist, concealing her white pants. She wrapped a second scarf on her already-covered head.

After she was dressed, she took a brightly colored prayer mat out of a big barrel in front of the mosque and glanced at me shyly. “You come?”

I glanced inside. Deni was still praying. I felt like I was intruding enough just by watching him.

“No, thanks, Siti. But thank you for asking.”

She smiled and joined Deni inside. I watched to see if she laid her carpet next to him, knowing I’d be jealous if she did. But she didn’t, and I was glad.

Azmi lingered behind and followed me around the side of the building.

INDONESIA MENANGIS
was spray-painted on the white chipped paint. “What does that mean?” I asked, shielding my eyes from the sun’s bright glare.

His beaming smile faded. “Cry,” he said. “Indonesia cry,” he translated before deciding to join the others inside.

 

While they prayed, I wandered around the marshy land, hyper-careful of where I stepped.

It was so hard to believe this was the place where so many died.

I felt weird walking there, but I was curious and I didn’t want to wait in the car. I slopped through the mud over to what must have been the foundation of a house. Concrete blocks laid in a rectangular shape, with rusted metal pipes sticking out. Everything was covered with sand and muck.

I walked around the inside, imagining the people who had lived there.

Were they home the day the sea came?

A rusty pot handle was sticking out of the dirt. Were they cooking when they heard the roar? Did they run out the door and toward the mosque or toward the mountain? Did they have a teenage boy who escaped by
motor?

I watched him tuck the prayer rug back into the barrel and walk down the steps toward me. His eyes were red, and I could tell he’d been crying. I touched his arm. I couldn’t help it, and for the moment I didn’t care who saw. He took a deep, long breath and looked up at the sky.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Are you?”

I thought about all the images I’d seen that day: the mass graves, the beat-up cars, the destroyed homes. I thought about Dad back at the
pesantren,
awake now and certainly worried about me. I thought about how everything was a million times worse for Deni.

“Yeah,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I’m okay.”

At Azmi and Siti’s house, we were asked to sit on a large bamboo mat that covered most of the small living and dining space.

“Come, come, come, come. Please, sit, sit, sit, sit,” said their
ibu,
who was wearing wide round glasses and a peach silk scarf on her head. She was soft and round in all the places a mother should be. Their
bapak
was short, with Azmi’s beaming smile. Dressed in dried-mud-covered pants, he smelled like fresh fish when he took my hand and placed it to his heart.

“Where your father? Your mother?” Ibu asked me immediately, taking her turn with my hand in her rough warm one.

I glanced at Deni, who nodded. “My father is joining me soon,” I said.

Frowning, Bapak turned to Deni and asked him directly, “You bring American girl here alone?
Without her father?”

“He’s coming,” Deni insisted in the same firm voice, glancing over at me like,
We better stick to this story.
I nodded quickly.

“Okay.” Bapak grinned with open arms. “Tonight you stay here. You are our family tonight. Deni, Azmi tells us you are coming home, that you sent letter from Yogyakarta! We are happy! Please. Sit. Eat.” He gestured toward the mat where tea and plates were set up, waiting.

“I’m happy too, Bapak,” he said. “I have missed my friends.”

Ibu held tight to Deni’s arm. “Much has changed in Aceh. Much is better, no?” she asked.

Deni nodded. “Much has changed, but much is still the same.”

Ibu poured steaming tea into our cups. At a trillion degrees with a gazillion percent humidity, sweat was dripping down my back. I would have done about
anything
for a bottle of ice orange.

Ibu and Bapak were smiling at me.

“Drink, drink,” they said, pointing at the steaming cup in my hand.

Deni eyed me. I felt rude not drinking but remembered his warning:
Wait until the second offer.

“Drink, please, drink,” Ibu repeated with more urgency.

That was two.

All eyes were on me as I took a sip of what? Jalapeño sugar water? The scalding liquid burned my throat. I choked down the spicy tea and set the cup back onto the saucer.

“Delicious,” I said. Deni was right: it was very, very
hot
tea.

“Hungry?” asked Siti, who had been in the kitchen since we arrived. She set bowls of smooth curries, fried fish and funny-shaped fruits onto the center of the mat. Everything looked delicious. We hadn’t eaten since the snack on the plane. I tucked my feet even farther under my butt to make sure I wasn’t pointing my toes at anyone. Deni winked at me. So far, so good.

Ibu disappeared into the kitchen and returned with covered aluminum round bowls, like the ones in Thai restaurants, filled with fluffy jasmine rice.

“Thank you so much.” I hoped they couldn’t hear my stomach growl. “This looks delicious.”

“Eat, eat,” Ibu said, gesturing toward the food.

“Eat, please, eat,” she said again.

“Thank you,” I said.

Everyone was staring at me. Deni leaned over and whispered, “Guests eat first.”

So I dished up some rice with the serving spoon and covered it with seafood curry. Individual bowls of water sat in front of us to rinse our fingers off between helpings.

“Brothers and sisters in America?” Ibu asked me after we’d all dished up.

I shook my head. “No. I wish I did, though.”

“Siti’s sisters and mother were taken by the wave,” Bapak explained. “She is our family now.”

“I thought Siti and Azmi were brother and sister?” I asked Deni.

“No,” he said. “Cousins.”

Azmi explained that their house was built by Habitat for Humanity. A cute wooden structure with a porch, their home was small but clean and seemingly well built. They were one of the lucky families, Azmi explained. Many still lived in the tent camps.

“Did you live in the tent camps after too?” I asked Deni.

Deni shrugged. “Tents were for families.”

And Deni was alone. His whole family was gone.

“Our tent was full,” Azmi said. “Or he would have been with us.”

My heart broke for him. He lost his whole family, and he wasn’t even allowed to stay with friends? No wonder he left.

I wondered when he was going to ask Bapak and Ibu about his father.

“Where did you stay?” I asked carefully.

“A different place each night. Mostly I slept on the highest ground I could find, on a dry blanket if I could find one. Tents were a luxury after the storm.”

He read my face and stopped talking. I knew no matter what, he didn’t want me to feel sorry for him. I looked down at my tea, pretending it was the steam misting up my eyes.