Tsunami miracle survivor
"That's where my mother was standing," Rizal says pointing down the small dirt street.
"And my father was here."
He puts his family in the last spots he saw them, frozen in time, seconds before they died.
He had wanted to lie in bed that day. His father told him to get up.
He had asked his mum: "What are you going to cook?"
She said: "Your dad caught a big fish yesterday. I'm going to barbecue it."
It was their last conversation.
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The only way Rizal can remember his mother is by visualising moments together and clinging to them.
The only reminder he has of her face is a faded, high-contrast photocopy of her ID card that he was able to get from a government office in Jakarta. Every other photo and every other memory was taken by the same 18m wave that took her, his father, his sister and his village on Boxing Day, 2004.
It has taken us three hours to get to Calang, driving south from Banda Aceh through winding cliffside roads and flat valleys alongside pristine beaches.
"I don't come home often," Rizal says, "and when I do, I never come past this street.
"Right now, I can see my mum there and I can see my dad sitting across from her, smiling at me.
"Tonight, I will surely dream about them. I guarantee you."
Rizal drifted in the Indian Ocean on a makeshif raft after the tsunami.
It is 10 years since Rizal was on this street and he has flown from his post-tsunami home in Kuala Lumpur to return with The West Australian to Calang.
It was here where the ground shook beneath him on the morning of December 26, 2004 in a way it had never done before - rising up and down violently, not side to side as it did during the area's usual tremors. And then, the "big black wave" came.
Rizal had dreamt for days that "something bad" was going to happen. He knew this was it.
"I hugged my dad. I took his hand . . . I said 'maybe today's the last day (and) I won't see you again'. If you're safe, look for me. If I'm safe, I'll look for you."
He turned around but couldn't see his mother. His dad told him to run. What happened next was one of the tsunami's most extraordinary survival stories.
Fighting for his life in swirling waters, which "felt like being sucked into a blender", Rizal grabbed at a floating branch and then another one. As dead bodies and debris surged around him, he pulled together pieces of wood and bound them together with bark he had ripped off them to form a makeshift raft.
For the next nine days, he drifted alone in the Indian Ocean, surviving huge waves and escaping two shark attacks, in an incredible feat of survival that became known as the "tsunami miracle".
Washed 500km from Banda Aceh, he was finally found 160km from land by a cargo ship travelling from South Africa to Japan.
The crew treated his injuries, he was severely sunburnt and dehydrated and both his legs and an arm were broken, and dropped him off in Malaysia.
In the days before his rescue, he says he gave up on life twice when ships sailed past and either did not notice or had ignored him.
On the first night at sea he pulled a policeman into the raft and shared with him coconuts and noodles he had managed to fish out of the ocean.
The next morning, when the pair could see then lights of a city in the distance, the policeman decided to swim to shore.
"I said you're mad. You swim, you die. It is 30 or 40km away.
"Then he swam away. I never saw him again."
On the edge of Calang, we meet someone he hasn't seen in years - fellow survivor Ari Afrizal.
Afrizal's story is just as remarkable. He floated for 15 days and was picked up by a Middle Eastern container ship 600km from Aceh and taken to the same hospital in Malaysia where Rizal was being treated.
Afrizal is quiet and says his life has not been good. Rizal explains later that his friend has suffered since his return to Indonesia.
"Trauma," he says, in the way so many Acehnese explain the psychological toll of modern history's worst natural disaster.
In the 10 years since his rescue, Rizal has built a life in Malaysia.
"(But) even though I've found a good life. My heart has been taken away," he says.
He says people think he is happy, but: "They don't know how I suffer.
"To be honest, I don't tell many people that I cry almost every day when I pray. I miss my family so much. No-one can replace them.
"My mum is the only one who treated me very well. Nobody treated me like her.
"I have a good job now and when I save money I think how I could give it to my mum - to buy her new clothes, a new phone..."
It is late afternoon and Rizal receives a call from the only other member of his immediate family who survived the tsunami, his older brother, Ronal.
Ronal was in the station inland with the army, away from Calang, in 2004.
He tells Rizal that his wife has just given birth, two weeks premature. It's a boy. They’ve named him after Rizal.
We rush back to Banda Aceh. The baby is weak but the doctors say he is going to make it.
Rizal cradles him nervously and wipes away a tear. It is the first new member of his immediate family since everyone else was wiped out 10 years ago.
"It'a a new generation," he smiles.
He wishes his mum was there.
