Twenty years on from Boxing Day tsunami, survivor speaks about saving his daughters and building a life in New Zealand

Faisal Syafii lost his home, business and first wife, Siti Syamsiah, during the Indian Ocean tsunami 20 years ago today, but the welder - who managed to save his daughters, Eka and Selyna - says while his story is tinged with tragedy it is one of survival, of never giving up and of building a new life in New Zealand.

Faisal Syafii's wife had just brought him coffee when the earth started shaking on Boxing Day 2004 - eventually triggering a tsunami that would kill more than 250,000 people across 14 countries - including Siti Syamsiah, who was carrying the couple's third child.

"It was Sunday morning around six o'clock. I still remember that she was kissing me and saying, 'Happy birthday, honey.'

"I said, 'Thank you, darling.' She gave me coffee, nice coffee, Aceh coffee. I love it."

It was the welder's 34th birthday and he walked into his workshop at the back of the couple's Banda Aceh property to do some tidying up.

The couple's daughters Eka, 6, and Selyna, 4, were sleeping nearby.

"And then there was a quake. I jump and grab my two daughters from their beds and go to the workshop."

Siti joined them.

"It was a quake like 7.1 [magnitude] I think is the first earthquake what I'm feeling. It's not long."

Far worse was to come.

After checking for damage and putting the children back to bed, a second life-changing earthquake struck.

"Around 7.30 - something like that - a second quake [was] coming, bigger and bigger. It [was a] really big earthquake and I saw behind me it was a river. It was like a waterfall like that and then water poured from the ground."

Faisal then heard the man who rented a room from him crying out.

"He said: 'Faisal, run tsunami!' I never know about tsunami to be honest in my life. I never know tsunami."

A 9.1 magnitude earthquake had struck off the coast of Sumatra, sparking the Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated coastal areas of South-east Asia, including Aceh in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu in India, Khao Lak in Thailand and southern Africa.

Aceh suffered the highest death toll - about 150,000 fatalities - in one of the world's worst-ever natural disasters.

Faisal did as he was told and ran.

"I grabbed my two daughters in my arms. I run and my wife hold around my neck and clothes. I saw my house collapse, collapsing suddenly in front of me.

"I saw thousands of people running away and plenty of cars smashing people. It was crazy.

"I look behind me about six, seven, nine [times]. I can't remember what ... really high like 30m high tsunami coming up and smashing all people. My wife was like, 'Honey, run!'"

They ran and hid in a shop before that building, too, was destroyed. Faisal lost contact with his family as the structure broke up.

Swamped, his deceased parents suddenly appeared in a vision.

"In the water, under the water, they are asking me, 'Come with us.' I said, 'No, I don't come with you. I need to save my family'."

Swept into the side of a shopping mall, Faisal was able to get his head above water, but was faced with a choice no father or husband should ever have to make.

"I can hear one thing: my younger daughter Selyna was there. 'Papa!' she just said, then no sound. And then my wife was like, 'Honey!'

"I can't see clearly. I'm confused. I'm in the middle. Who's the person I'm hearing ... saving. I don't know why I take my younger daughter. I take her, but I don't get her, I take her again."

Father and daughter were washed away. It would be the last time Faisal ever saw his wife, Siti Syamsiah.

Selyna was in a bad way, but with the help of other survivors Faisal secured her on the third floor of the mall.

"And after that I come down to look for my wife and she gone. She was gone."

All around him were tsunami victims.

"I was panicking. There's hundreds and hundreds of people. It is scary pictures, everything scary."

Then he heard a familiar voice.

"I'm hearing and I saw my older daughter, Eka. She's stuck in a banana tree."

He asked if she had seen her mother.

"Yes. Mama pull me up by my hair and put me in banana tree."

Faisal dove into the metres-deep, dirty water left in the tsunami's wake in an effort to find his wife, but to no avail.

He next turned his attention to rescuing Eka, who was calling out for him.

After getting Eka out of the tree, they scrambled back to the mall, where Selyna's condition had deteriorated.

"I give her CPR. I try, I try. Wake up now, wake up sayang (darling) wake up, Selyna. She doesn't answer anything.

"I'm losing my mind. I pull up her legs and her head is on the ground, and water comes out of her mouth and nose and she talk, but after that she's quiet again."

The building was unstable and there were aftershocks.

Faisal helped get the injured and distressed people down to street level and took the girls to higher ground before returning to look for his wife.

"I talked to Eka. 'You need to look after Selyna and Papa try to go back to where we are before tsunami and try and find your mum'."

"Yes, Papa, please please. I don't want to lose mum."

He searched into the night.

"I'm hearing only dogs, no people. All died the people. It's mud like two or three metres where I was working to find it, her body, about chest height."

He reached out for a woman's hand but it was not Siti's - then he saw another hand go up.

"I don't have a torch. I don't have nothing. A man is calling, 'Help me, help me' and I look at his hand and I like pull it and when I look at him he's not a ghost, it's a human. I'm pulling him and put him on the road and try and find some drinking water."

Faisal left the man and continued his search until a police officer friend arrived and told him he needed to get back to Selyna, who was by then unconscious.

He wanted to continue searching and had to be physically subdued.

"And then I'm thinking I'm wrong and I went back and he came with me."

Selyna was quiet and Eka had an infected leg and was also very unwell.

"We are sleeping on the road, sleeping on cardboard in the rain, earthquakes."

The aftermath

In the early days after the tsunami, the survivors had to fend for themselves.

"Everything is shared. No government come. We just find the food from the tsunami, like noodles left behind."

After a few days, international help began to arrive to support Indonesian recovery efforts.

"Red Cross from New Zealand and Australia coming a week after it happened. They are calm. They are asking people who are very sick to be brought to their tent.

"I carry Selyna, my younger daughter, and put her in the tent. I check Eka's injuries and it's actually [infected] - big, swollen - so I bring her there too."

Defence personnel from New Zealand and Australia were also arriving and working with the Indonesian military and police.

With his daughters being cared for, Faisal - like many others - could lend a hand with the clean-up.

It was a grisly task.

"I'm helping too when I have free hours. I was finding bodies and putting them in plastic bags. I find heaps of bodies and put them beside the road, then the military truck pick them up.

"Don't know name, don't know face. Everything really scary at the time for me."

Officials were also working hard to put people in touch with each other, but Faisal was not having much luck connecting with his extended family in Indonesia.

Then a New Zealand brother-in-law tracked him down.

"I'm still staying at the Red Cross tent with my daughters, sleeping on cardboard. I sleep there until Paul calls New Zealand military asking if I'm alive.

"I can't remember the name, they military. [Is] your name Faisal? You got a brother-in-law in New Plymouth?

"I'm like thank you God, you are blessing me, helping me."

They connected Paul with Faisal.

He asked after the girls.

"Selyna very very sick. I don't want to lose her."

"What about Siti, your wife?"

"She's gone. I don't know, but I'm not finding her body. She dead."

Faisal's sisters, Neneng and Masyitah, had married Kiwis Paul and Mark Smith respectively.

The Taranaki brothers, who had worked in Indonesia, began to put a plan in place.

"The Red Cross come and see me. 'Oh you have brother-in-law in New Zealand in New Plymouth? And they take care of me really well. They bring me to another state, Medan.

"And Selyna getting better and then Paul make a plan for us to come to New Zealand.

"Thank you so much everyone, the community, New Plymouth. Thank you so much. They make donations, sending me money to live on before I come to New Zealand."

In April 2005, Faisal and the girls finally touched down in Auckland.

"I'm thinking, okay is this a dream, am I dreaming or is this the reality in my life? I'm trying to pinch my skin. I'm feeling the hurt. It's not a dream, I'm really in New Zealand."

Faisal found his welding skills were in demand and he soon had a job at Fitzroy Engineering - where he will stay employed for the next 17 years - and his daughters started school.

"New Zealand is supporting me. New Zealand people, not only Indonesian people, all New Zealand people at that time, from at work, from around me. They support me to make me stronger and make it easier for me to look after my two daughters."

Five years passed and Faisal was ready to find love again.

An Indonesian colleague on the Maui Platform - who initially thought Faisal was from the Philippines - introduced him to his Jakarta-based sister Rini Handayani over the phone.

"And then we talk, talk and talk. I mean we make lot of, like, this discussion."

Sometime later, Rini asks Faisal if he was serious about her.

"Yeah, I'm not joking. I'm looking for a wife and I've got two daughters and they need a mother."

After meeting in person, they married in Jakarta in 2009 and Rini moved to New Plymouth.

In 2012, the couple welcomed a son, Ghannam.

In the same year, with the help of the Smith family, they stepped onto the New Zealand property ladder.

"Paul and Mark are proud of me because I'm telling them I want to buy a house. I get the property and I was crying, never I'm thinking I get property in New Zealand. It's not been easy for me. I come to New Zealand to save my family and I get there."

The Smith family helped Faisal with the deposit.

"I pay when I have money and I pay [back the] 40 grand in like four years. And then mum [Betty Smith] and dad [Peter Smith] said: 'We are proud of you. You're a really hard worker. You've built up again.'

"I said, 'Yeah, I lost everything but now I'm happy'."

Fast forward to 2024 and Selyna has completed a Masters in nursing, is working at Southern Cross and recently married.

"She make me proud. She told me: 'I do that for mum, Papa', and I told her, 'Mum will be happy in the sky, she will be looking down at you'."

Eka is employed at engineering company Schlumberger and Ghannam is doing well in school.

Rini, an accountant by training, is working as a librarian at Puke Ariki.

"She is doing really good. I mean she has a good career now."

But despite the horrors he witnessed and the years that have passed, Faisal still yearns for Aceh.

"It's been 20 years I'm living in New Zealand and I've never been back home in Aceh. I've been to Java with my wife, but I've never stayed at Aceh. I really want to go home to see what it looks like now in Aceh.

"I still have friends there who survived the tsunami. I just want to see them to say hello and share, not like showing off, just to share. To keep their motivation to be strong to be like, not give up."

And then there is the lingering guilt at not being able to find Siti Syamsiah.

"Never I find her body. That's what makes me get guilty. I'm feeling like I'm not a good husband, not a good man for her, because I'm not finding her body."

Selyna's recent success eases his pain.

"Sometimes I stop my feeling guilty because she is making a difference in the world. I'm proud of her, she make our family go up."

Faisal says his story is one of hope.

"What I like to share, what I want to say is never, ever give up. Never say, like, oh, I'm done. I did that [for a while], but you can come back. Yes, that's what I'm like.

"And thank you. Thank you God, you are blessing me, you're helping me. And thank you Smith family and Rini for taking me into your heart."

A keen fisherman, Faisal is at peace with the ocean now.

"At first I don't want to see the sea. Now I like the sea, I like fishing. I have a small boat and I go far away, but I'm not crazy - I've got a family to look after."

Out on the ocean he makes his peace with Siti Syamsiah.

"I can talk to her in the sea. I'm feeling she's still here. She's still in the sea because I never found her body."

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