October 12, 2002 — page 4

Around 3:00, the second phase began: carting away corpses and body parts. "There were so many bodies," says Haji Bambang. "A lot of skin peeled away. Bodies without limbs, missing heads. Whatever we found nearby we put with the remains." Haji Bambang was helped through the night by 32-year-old Gung Tresna, the head lifeguard at Kuta beach, who rallied his 12 guards to help evacuate the wounded and, later, collect the dead. Witnesses say Gung Tresna was respectful and gentle—very Balinese—with the corpses. He ordered sheets, blankets and tablecloths to be taken from nearby hotels and restaurants. Every time a body was found, Gung Tresna carefully laid a piece of cloth over it and covered the victim's face. "You must do this for people who die," he says, "to give them respect. In death, money doesn't matter, material possessions don't matter, dignity is what we should care about."

Businessman Kadek stopped making calls around then. He spent the next few hours praying and meditating—hoping for answers to the awful questions that the whole world would soon start asking. Kadek insists Air Paradise will commence flights to Korea and Taiwan in December as originally planned, but if Australians obey their country's Indonesia travel warning, his airline will be hard-pressed to lift off.

Surfer Beirne went back to his hotel after escaping the blasts. "When I got back I woke up my friend. 'We must go back down there,' I said. But he said no. He wanted nothing to do with it. I should have gone and helped. I was all right." Beirne's voice gets shaky, his cheeks redden and his eyes well up with tears. "I was able-bodied."

Between 5:00 and 6:00, Haji Bambang, who is a Muslim, went looking for a quiet place to pray. Every inch of his pants and short-sleeve shirt was stained with other people's blood, but he knew Allah would understand why he was unclean. Allah would accept his prayers. So there in a parking lot, 100 meters from an infernal scene of death and destruction, Haji Bambang knelt down among the shards of glass and conducted his first prayer of the day. At 7:00, someone brought a change of clothes. Haji Bambang removed the blood-caked shirt and pants and donned a pair of camo-pants and a dark T shirt. He has washed the clothes he was wearing that night, and will keep them as a reminder. He plans to put them on again next Oct. 12 to commemorate the horrors of that night.

On Sunday morning, Naseema Theile's maid Moyan awoke to find that her employer hadn't returned home. Moyan immediately went to the morgue at Sanglah. Looking across the sea of mangled bodies, she found the formerly vivacious Theile still and cold. Nonetheless, according to the maid, Theile was still beautiful—her's was the only face in the gruesome collection that was untouched, untortured, still pristine.

Gung Tresna stayed on the scene until 3:00 Sunday afternoon, when exhaustion kicked in. "I wanted to keep going," he said, "but I could not continue." He went home but was too restless to sleep. When he closed his eyes, he would replay the horrific scenes from the night before. Television was running news reports nonstop about the blasts. So Gung Tresna sat with his family, had a drink of water and tried his best not to think about anything at all.

The day after the bombings, Australia sent three military C-130 transport planes to airlift foreigners from Bali. At the same time, a reverse flow was occurring: people flying to Bali, mainly from Australia, to try to find their friends or relatives—or collect their remains.

Ayu the cashier left the hospital on Wednesday, her burned arm slowly healing underneath a yellow mat of dried pus. On Thursday, she and her fiancé Nyoman visited the remains of the Sari Club. Balinese Hindus believe that when a near-fatal event occurs, a piece of the soul is left behind; the survivor must return to the site to reclaim that lost fragment. Ayu and her family ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape and placed their canangs, or offerings, of rice and flowers in front of the mangled skeleton of a Toyota Kijang minivan. Ayu broke down. Her cheeks reddened and her hands shook. Nyoman was in better spirits. He and his friends lugged a whole roast pig to the shell of the Sari Club—his offering to the gods to thank them for a wish granted.

Jodie O'Shea, the burn victim helped by Burgoyne and the two vacationing physicians, died of kidney failure in her mother's arms in a Perth hospital. The body of Corey Paltridge, whom everyone was watching dancing on the Sari club dance floor when the bombs went off, was identified in a Kuta morgue and flown back to Australia. His parents say they are still planning to celebrate their son's 21st birthday on Nov. 6. His teammate Phil Britten, saved by Tansen and Mira Stannard, was evacuated to Perth on Monday. The couple got an update by telephone from his grandmother. "You people are angels," she told them. Phil will be all right, the grandmother said, adding with a stiff upper lip: "Nothing that he can't get over." For so many others that night, the losses were too painful to ever be overcome.

—With reporting by Bob Calabritto/Seminyak, Simon Crittle/New York City, Isabella Ng/Hong Kong, Andrew Perrin/Kuta and Genevieve Wilkinson/Singapore

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