By Stanley Widianto
PALEMBAYAN, Indonesia, Dec 2 (Reuters) – In the days since cyclone-induced floods and landslides battered Indonesia’s Sumatra island, Abdul Ghani has been carrying around a picture of his missing wife, showing it to everyone he meets.
The 57-year-old Ghani, who makes a living selling soft drinks, has spent days trudging along the mud-laden roads of his town of Palembayan looking everywhere for Marsoni, his wife of 25 years.
After the couple’s only child passed away seven years ago, Marsoni is all that he has left.
And his hopes of finding her are fading.
“Is she alive? I don’t think she is,” he said. “But I hope they find her body, even if it’s just a piece of her hand.”
Ghani was out working on Friday afternoon when the rain started picking up. Before he could reach his home by the river, residents told him six houses including his own had been swept away.
The first person he thought of was his wife. Ghani has been carrying a large picture of her ever since, showing it to passers by and the rescue teams working in the ruins of collapsed buildings, where voices are drowned out by the loud hum of excavators.
“I came home from work … everywhere was like a river,” he said. “Everything was flattened. I was broken.”
As of Tuesday, the disaster had killed 686 people in Indonesia, with 476 people missing. More than one million people were evacuated.
The devastation in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand follows months of adverse and deadly weather in Southeast Asia, including typhoons that have lashed the Philippines and Vietnam and caused frequent and prolonged flooding elsewhere.
Holding back tears, Ghani said he only wants his wife to have a proper burial.
“I had a wife, we loved each other,” he said. “No house, no wife. Where do I go next?”
(Reporting by Aidil Ichlas, Willy Kurniawan, Johan Purnomo in Palembayan and Stanley Widianto in Jakarta; Editing by Martin Petty)
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