Before Saudah’s home on Sumatra island in Indonesia lie two battered coast guard vessels, stranded by a tsunami two decades ago, serving as a constant reminder that her youngest son remains absent.
Saudah, who like many Indonesians is known by a single name, holds on to the belief that Muhammad Siddiq, just six years old when the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunami hit on December 26, 2004, is still alive and clings to the hope of a reunion one day.
This catastrophic wave, initiated by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake, claimed the lives of approximately 230,000 individuals across the coastal regions of over a dozen nations, including India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, marking it as one of the most lethal disasters in recorded history.
Aceh, the province at the northern tip of Sumatra where Saudah and her family live, accounted for more than half of the casualties.
Now at 64, Saudah vividly recalls the earth shaking and her neighbors fleeing in terror. She remembers desperately holding on to Siddiq as she urged her seven other children to flee to the mosque.
“I didn’t flee. I lay down clutching Siddiq tightly, thinking it was merely a strong wind. I prayed to God, asking: ‘What is happening?’” Saudah recalled, her voice quaking.
“Then I returned to my house just as I noticed the wave approaching, slithering towards us,” she described.
While holding Siddiq, she bolted. She only released him once they reached the mosque, but by that time, the massive wave had caught up with them. They were engulfed by the water and separated.
In the chaos that followed, Saudah was reunited with only six of her children – Siddiq and one of her daughters remain missing.
That daughter is believed to have been laid to rest in a mass grave. Some survivors reported seeing Siddiq among the 500,000 displaced by the disaster, and Saudah’s husband insists Siddiq has visited him in dreams, assuring him that he is alive.
The family clings to that hope, praying that Siddiq will make his way to their new home, which now occupies the ground where their previous house once stood.
“We continue to look for him, and I regularly share his picture on social media,” shared Saudah’s 42-year-old son, Femi Malisa
