“This is it,” said Safrial, a carpenter, to his two young sons when a towering tsunami of black water rushed toward them two years ago. “This is the end of the world.”

For most people who lived around him it was, and today Safrial (45), who uses only one name, hammers and sweats in the sun in a neighbourhood where he knows the names the dead more than those of the living.

He hammers constantly, even as he talks. “This was a test from God,” he said. “For those who died, it was disaster. But for the survivors, we must pass the test and become better people.”

The process of recovery has been a mixture of progress and disappointment. All across the ravaged cityscape, scraped bare by the waves, thousands of tiny, toy-box houses have sprung up in recent months as a programme of rebuilding gains momentum. But many new houses are empty because they lack water, sanitation and electricity and because there are no schools, clinics or commercial activity nearby. Many people whose homes they replaced were swept away to their deaths.

Old landmarks are gone and at night, the heart of the ruined area is almost as dark and silent as it was before construction started. This rebuilt city of ghosts seems like a ghost town.

The tsunami, caused by an earthquake off the shore of Aceh, took 230,000 lives and left nearly two million homeless in more than a dozen nations, including India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia.

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