‘Kids keep asking about their father – how do I explain it?’

Cianjur – When Husein’s body arrived to be lowered into the ground, his grief-stricken relatives broke down, some in wails so loud they echoed through the undulating hills of West Java’s Cianjur.

The 48-year-old construction worker and father of four, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, was building a house with three others when a strong earthquake shook the town’s foundations on Monday.

It caused buildings to collapse on residents, landslides to bury locals and forced families to reckon with the trauma of losing those closest to them. One of Husein’s co-workers also died. “This is a disaster,” said Husein’s 30-yearold niece Yunisa Yuliani at his funeral in the village of Gasol near Cianjur, one of the hardest hit by the quake that killed 268 people.

“It’s so hard to even look at his children, they are so young. They keep asking about their father. How do I explain it to them?”

Staring at his body, which had been carried for the duration of a five-minute walk from the construction site, his sister who lived next door to him became inconsolable. Several of his nieces hugged each other tightly. A tearful man was so heartbroken he had to be held up by his friends.

“I just lost a brother 10 days ago. He died of appendicitis and now I lost another brother,” said Husein’s 43-year-old sister Siti Rohmah.

Husein left behind a threeyear-old daughter who does not understand that she has lost her father. His eldest son, in his 20s, watched the digging of his grave quietly as his seven-year-old son cried in a relative’s arms.

It was a scene replicated across the Cianjur area as families retrieved their loved ones from morgues to bury them in accordance with Islamic beliefs. –