One of the men looking is Mohammad Azeez, who taught English at a school that was smashed by the tsunami. Azeez is a distant relative of Ajmal, but there's another bond between them now: the body of Ajmal's 4-month-old son was swept by the waves into a room in Azeez's house. Azeez, a cosmopolitan, voluble, fluent English speaker, seems a world apart from the tradition-minded Ajmal, but he's playing as big a role as Ajmal in Maligaikadu's effort to limp back to normality. Azeez, 42, and his fellow teachers have corralled about 1,300 of their students (they had 2,000 before the tsunami, 75 of whom died and the others are in camps) and struck a deal with a nearby school to allow them to use the compound each afternoon. You can't actually teach English at a time like this, Azeez says; students have to be counseled, encouraged to sing and paint, and taught to get over the trauma of the tsunami. But at least the first step has been taken: they're back in school. "In a month, I think, we'll be able to get back to real lessons," he says. Azeez visits his damaged house every day, but at night he returns to a relative's home inland to sleep. Sometimes, as he ponders going home for good, he drops by to see how Ajmal's fish business is doing. "He's a brave man," Azeez says. "I didn't think of him as a brave man before, but you look at people differently now."

About a kilometer of wreckage and rubble away from Ajmal's shop, Velupullai Kanavadipullai, 55, is performing a similar role in Karativu, a Tamil village next to Maligaikadu. Karativu seems even more devastated than Maligaikadu, and it's still mostly deserted. Of the 150 surviving families that lived here, only half a dozen have come back from the refugee camp, and only Kanavadipullai's family spends the night in the village. "Bhayam," he says, when asked to explain the absence of others. It's an ancient word for fear, originally from Sanskrit. "People ran up trees to protect themselves. They lost their sons and daughters. You have to understand how frightened they still are of the water."

Kanavadipullai, who lost his mother-in-law to the tsunami and had his house smashed in half, has reason to be afraid himself. But he's back. He's built a shed where he and some male relatives make tea. They've built another shed nearby, using a tent from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and some corrugated-metal roofs. Up to five of them go to sleep there every night, alone amid the sound of the waves. In the mornings, the men have the look of a band of Robinson Crusoes, as they make their way about in a forest of plaster, brick, nails and glass shards. Sometimes they wander in circles around their former homes, like animals engaged in a strange territorial ritual. A primal sense of possession appears to have brought Kanavadipullai back. "This is my house, and I don't want strangers coming here and stealing things," he says. One of his relatives begins sharpening a knife on a stone; they plan to scrape the cement off the loose bricks from damaged houses, then use the bricks to reconstruct their own homes. "I'm ready to start rebuilding, here or somewhere else, if the government or anyone else gives me some assistance," says Kanavadipullai. "Ghosts and the waves don't scare me." Soon, his wife and other female family members—they still sleep in the refugee camp—arrive with food and start cooking. In the afternoon the women call the men to come over and eat, near a Hindu temple partially demolished by the tsunami. The women serve lunch, the men demand second helpings, and for a brief time life seems normal again.

Returning to normality is a preoccupation at the Carmel Fatima College refugee camp in Kalmunai, which has been sheltering more than 300 families. Government officials have decided the refugees must move out so that classes can resume. One of the last to leave the camp is the family of K. Jaganathan. He sees his wife Lakshmi and 9-year-old daughter Anusya into a rented auto-rickshaw, along with the few tins, mattresses and boxes they've accumulated in the past two months; the biggest item they possess is his daughter's bicycle, and Jaganathan, 34, struggles to cram it on board. He and his family are not moving to a home of their own, but to a colony of wooden sheds built by Médecins Sans Frontières.

When the tsunami destroyed his house, Jaganathan was 30 km away in the city of Batticaloa, where he worked as a bookbinder at a printing press. The plant is still functioning, but Jaganathan has not gone to work since the waves hit. "My wife was in the water, my daughter was in the water, and I wasn't here," he says, still overwhelmed by the guilt. "I can't bear to leave them again." That's not how Lakshmi sees things. "I don't understand why he hasn't started working," she says. "You'll have to ask him. What I do know is that we don't have money except what the government gives us"—a $50 one-off payment plus a stipend for food.

Their new camp has 50 sheds, some large for the bigger families. The Jaganathans are assigned to one of the smaller sheds: No. 6. The water connections to the toilets and faucets aren't working yet at the camp, and there are no shower stalls; it's not clear where the women will bathe. The sheds have no flooring. Lakshmi gets to work at once, scooping up mud from the pile of sand nearby and spreading it like cement over the floor, so that the debris on the ground—broken glass, nails, thorns—won't hurt her family. Then she lays out a tarpaulin and takes out the cooking utensils, while Jaganathan carries a stack of bricks to build a little threshold in front of the shed. There is no electricity yet in the camp, so they sit with their daughter around a gas lamp that officials gave them.

After a while, something seems to change in Jaganathan. "We have to go to our own place as soon as possible," he says, as if getting this shed has whetted some desire to build a new house—and a new life. "I think I'll look for work soon." He goes to a relative's home to get some food and supplies; Lakshmi sits by the gas lamp and waits for him to come back. "It's peaceful here," she says. "There was so much noise at the refugee camp, so many men, women and children sleeping together." The next morning, she beams: "We had a good night's sleep, after a long time."

1 | 2

	Rising from the Rubble [Jan. 24, 2005] Devastated by war and natural disaster, can Indonesia's Aceh province find peace? Treat Them Like Kings [Jan. 24, 2005] Our culture says we cannot tell aid workers to leave Language Lessons [Jan. 17, 2005] In the wake of Asia's disaster, the world learns to choose its words carefully Race Against Time [Jan. 17, 2005] An inside look at the rush to beat disease, hunger and the destruction of the tsunami Naming the Dead [Jan. 17, 2005] Relatives and scientists turn to the grim task of identifying victims Global Agenda: Comforting Strangers [Jan. 17, 2005] Lessons to be learned from the world's generosity More Related Items | Search all issues of TIME Magazine