Ten Years After the Tsunami, an Indonesian Couple Says They Found Their ... - The New Republic
on December 26, 2004—two hours before the earth shook and his world began to crumble—a 42-year-old Indonesian man named Septi Rangkuti got out of bed to say his morning prayers. She was 11 years younger than her husband and strong-willed. Her parents having died before she reached her teens, she had helped raise and support her four younger siblings. It was a clear, calm morning, and warm—as it always was on the coast of Sumatra, a volcano-studded island that stretches diagonally across the Equator for nearly 1,800 kilometres. The Rangkutis lived in Aceh, the northernmost region, known as the “veranda of Mecca” because it is where Islam was first introduced to Indonesia. When the travel writer Norman Lewis visited Aceh in 1991, he compared the spectacular scenery along its western flank favourably with the unspoiled parts of the Amazon rainforest. The road was so bad in parts that it seemed to barely exist, Lewis noted in An Empire of the East. On reaching Meulaboh, which “had lost all those things that hold a good village together, but had never quite turned itself into a town,” the 83-year-old Englishman drew suspicious stares. But the Rangkutis were happy there, in their small house painted the colour of the sea. Source: www.newrepublic.com
