The Body In The Earth
Following a devastating earthquake in West Java, rescuers searched for two days to reunite a seven-year-old girl with her family
They were looking for signs of a little girl.
The early morning sun beat down on the village of Mangunkerta in Cianjur Regency as rescuers pawed through the rubble.
“Do you think she is still alive?” an onlooker asked as rescuers formed a human chain and passed buckets and cooking pots of rocks and debris from one set of hands to the next.
“We have to believe she is still alive,” replied another onlooker. “We have to believe she will be found safe.”
Seven-year-old Ashika Nur Fauziah, better known as Cika, had been missing since a 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit this part of West Java on 21 November.
Surrounded by steep valleys, the village of Mangunkerta was built around a single road barely wide enough for two cars to pass. Cika’s hamlet was located down a series of winding alleys, against a view of emerald green rice fields. When the quake hit, virtually all the houses in Mangunkerta – small, poorly-built structures – collapsed.
An electricity pole skewered the roof of Cika’s house.
“Just before it happened she was flitting from house to house and she came over to see me,” said her neighbour Asep. “She had a sweet tooth and she wanted money for candy.”
As Cika darted away from Asep’s house and turned back towards her home, the earthquake began to rumble. “Her mother screamed at her to run,” recounted Asep.
In the confusion, Cika’s mother, Imas Masfahitah, lost sight of her daughter.
Now, the search for her little girl had entered its second day.
Members of different agencies – the National Search and Rescue Agency, the Navy, the Fire Service, the National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure, the Rapid Response Taskforce – had been working nonstop. They had reason to be hopeful: two days earlier, a 6-year-old boy, Azka Maulana Malik, had been plucked from the rubble alive after having been cushioned by a mattress when his house collapsed.
Jaksen Kolibu, a rescuer from the nearby city of Bogor, had been there and filmed a video of Azka being pulled from the ruins that went viral. “I was so shocked when he popped out,” Kolibu remembered, his eyes widening. “So shocked. I couldn’t believe that he was still alive.”
It could happen again with Cika, he said.
In the days after the earthquake, rescuers and locals had worked to uncover bodies without sophisticated equipment like cadaver dogs or ground penetrating radar. They relied mostly on scent to guide them – and for most of the morning at Cika’s home, there had been no smell of human decomposition.
But as the afternoon sun rose above Mangunkerta, the rescue team drilled deeper into broken pieces of concrete using a jackhammer hooked up to a generator, and the wind blew a new scent over the village.
Rescuers started to shift and fidget.
Sitting on a wall next to the remains of the village shop, Asep plugged his nose. “God is Great,” he said.
Ade, a member of the Rapid Response Unit from Cianjur, bounded over to the wreckage. “The house is next to a fish pond and the fish are dead and rotting, so let's not jump to conclusions,” he bellowed.
But the smell of death grew. Wire cutters were brought in to slice through the remaining debris and finally, a rescuer spotted her. A small body curled up deep in the mud.
“Is she alive?” Ade roared. “No?” His shoulders slumped. “Get a body bag.”
Cika was dead – one of more than a hundred children lost to the quake, Indonesia’s deadliest in several years. The high toll among children, many of whom were in school or at home when buildings buckled, has drawn scrutiny to the quality of construction in Cianjur and its rural surroundings. In the days that followed the tragedy, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo promised that the area would be rebuilt in regulation with quake-resistant building codes.
But for Cika, it was too late.
As rescuers and villagers started to recite prayers, Cika’s father Eka, who had been watching from the sidelines, burst into tears, burying his face in his hands as a relative wrapped his arm around him. He had to relay the news to his wife, Masfahitah, who had stood watch for hours the day before while rescuers dug through the rubble. She was still holding onto Cika’s favorite toy - a pink stuffed bear, its fur matted with mud.
Villagers started to form a line to carry the body out of the rubble and Ade began distributing latex gloves. “No bare hands,” he said, “It has been four days.”
Freeing Cika from her crevice was challenging. Her body lay face down in the mud, her hair covered in dust and her right arm twisted at a crooked angle. Setting down their tools, rescuers scraped out the dirt by hand and gently leveraged Cika free. The black body bag ballooned around her as she was placed inside.
Islamic tradition prescribes that bodies be buried as soon as possible after death, although loved ones typically take time to pay their respects beforehand.
Ade took Eka, Cika’s father, aside. It had been four days and touching Cika now came with the risk of disease.
“Listen,” he said, placing his hands on his shoulders, “You can’t take her and lay her out so that everyone can come as they usually would.” Ade’s voice softened. “What purpose would it serve now?”
In tears, Eka nodded. The girl would be buried right away.
It is thought that at least 335 people died as a result of the earthquake, with some still missing. While the quake was not particularly strong in magnitude, it had occurred at the shallow depth of just 10 kilometres, triggering mudslides in the mountainous region of Cugenang that had buried cars and villagers. It poured with rain in the days following the quake, making rescue efforts even more challenging.
After Cika was found at Mangunkerta, rescuers, their uniforms drenched in sweat, gently patted each other on the back. “I feel happiness mixed with sadness,” said Moch Nasrum, a member of the Bogor Fire Department. “Happy that we found her and sad because our little sister has already left this Earth.”
Nasrum and the other rescuers laid Cika down next to her house and formed a ring around her to say a communal prayer led by a member of the National Search and Rescue Agency whose motto is “May the Universe be Saved”.
Volunteers gently removed Cika from the body bag, washing her and wrapping her in a white funeral shroud. As they washed her body, her feet, pale and streaked with mud, were just visible through the crowd.
Eka stepped forward to lead the funeral prayers before his daughter was carried on a woven mat down a steep slope to a local graveyard.
“Lift her a little,” said Mohammad Arifin, a volunteer rescuer from West Bandung. He placed a small rock under Cika’s head. “Lift her head a little so that she can smell the earth.”
Erti, a neighbor of Cika’s and the only woman at the funeral, wondered where the girl had been trying to go when the earthquake suddenly moved the ground beneath her feet. She had been found in the direction of the local Islamic school and Erti guessed that she had tried to flee down an alleyway which had collapsed on her midway.
She had been found under three layers of concrete.
“Poor Cika. She would never usually have run away from her home,” Erti said. “She must not have known where to go.”
In the village graveyard, surrounded by mourners, Cika’s uncle lifted his hand to his ear and recited the Islamic call to prayer.
Her father Eka crouched at the head of her grave and dropped a handful of earth onto his daughter’s body.
It is the season of giving…and a time to remember those less fortunate.
To honour the spirit of the holidays, Hukum is donating 50% of all funds raised from paid subscriptions from now until the end of January to Save The Children Indonesia to help those affected by the Cianjur Earthquake.
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Disclaimer: This post does not constitute legal advice. While every effort has been made to translate legal documents accurately from Indonesian to English, the contents of this newsletter is for information only based on Hukum’s understanding of the law.