Stillness marks flash of Bali terror

By GREG ANSLEY

KUTA - Saturday night is still, close and very, very hot.

The narrow streets of Kuta are silent but for the muffled feet and low murmurs of several thousand Balinese, many carrying candles, passing through in a long, slow procession.

A week ago at this hour this part of Legian was alive with music, laughter and the joy the young take in life.

Now it is deserted, the vibrancy killed by the twin bombs at Paddys bar and the Sari club.

As the exact hour of the blast approaches, the armed police cordon lifts the scene-of-crime tape and allows the procession beyond the barrier to where international investigators have been combing for clues to the killers.

A handful of streetlights and the moon, three nights short of full, reveal a blackened car, wreathed in flowers, at the gates to hell.

The roof of one building folds down to form a skeletal wall where the front of one building used to be; a two-storey tenement across the street, running the depth of a block, is void of all but the walls needed to keep it erect.

The blast zone, still taped, is a field of rubble, enclosed on each side by buildings cascading into the destruction.

On the far side a choir sings hymns and chants of four religions, as they had a few hours earlier at a sunset healing ceremony on Kuta Beach, and as they have since Bali tried to make sense of the carnage of terrorism.

On this side of the zone mourners, Europeans scattered among them, move forward in groups to a wall covered metres high in flowers.

The low hum of movement stops, the mourners add their candles to a field of light, pray in silence, cross-legged on the ground, toss more flowers on the mound, and move on to allow others to take their place.

On the shattered way back, beyond the large oval wreaths that line the street, Claudia Rizky is sitting with her son Kartiza, 6, and daughter Rubi, 11 months, brown eyes wide in wonder.

A week ago, almost to the hour, the blast rocked Claudia's home 200m away.

The streets filled with screaming people; inside, Claudia's heart stopped as she saw the roof of her apartment collapse above Rubi, falling to touch her head.

"I thought she dead," she said.

The bruise above Rubi's left ear is just starting to heal.

"Now, can't sleep," Claudia says. "Sleep maybe half hour, then wake like I remember something. Wake like this [jerking her body suddenly].

"The religious leaders, they tell me, 'Claudia, you must forget'. I try, but how can I? It is not possible."

Kartiza and little Rubi are also wide awake. There is little sleep for them, either, and now they are afraid to be left alone.

The hard times are just beginning for Bali.

The tourists have fled, taking with them the money that feeds, houses and clothes the island's three million people.

Late on Friday night, Hamilton newlyweds Kay and Ian Pomfret arrive at Denpasar airport for the extra flight Qantas has added after the Australian and New Zealand Governments increased their urgings for people to leave, and Australian Prime Minister John Howard warned that Indonesia had become "infinitely more dangerous".

The couple have cut their honeymoon short by a week.

"We feel it's just a bit unsafe," Kay Pomfret says. "The streets are deserted. The people are really sad."

Her new husband adds: "I actually got advised by the Australian police yesterday on the main street to get out. We pretty much said, 'That's enough for us'."

Even as Time Asia once again names Bali as Asia's favourite destination, hotels have emptied.

Official figures show that within three days hotel occupancy plummeted and international departures outnumbered arrivals almost two to one.

Some figures now estimate that 300,000 bookings have been cancelled.

The sprawling restaurants of the Natour Kuta are all but empty at breakfast now.

At the nearby Ineka Hotel, staff say layoffs will start in two weeks; one man says he is preparing to return to his family's rice farm.

"Already, people are grabbing us by the arm to drag us into shops," says Wellingtonian Jacquie Ashton as she prepares to fly out.

"The first week [of her holiday before the bomb] was just buzzing.

"Everywhere was just chocker and you had to wait for your drink.

"Now you're being waited on."

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