This is a tale of two cities: the old city that was struck down and the new one that is rising in its place as fast as the tent stakes can be hammered into the ground.In the old city, more than 10,000 corpses remain under the rubble; the anonymous dead still outnumber the living who are working to excavate them. In the new city, tent communities spring up overnight for survivors and also for aid workers with identification cards, badges, and uniforms.The old city was the grand provincial capital of a fiercely independent people who fought against the Dutch colonial rulers - and then against the Indonesian government. In the new city, a wounded population is suddenly forced to depend on the central government in Jakarta, along with foreign aid organizations, for every possible human need, from water to rice to proper toilets. More than two weeks after an earthquake and tsunami struck this once-teeming city of 223,000, Banda Aceh, known for its gorgeous mosques and penchant for rebellion, is still taking stock of all it lost.An estimated quarter of the population is missing and presumed dead, among them the mayor. The local bureau of a major provincial newspaper, Serambi, has been wiped out. The largest university of the province, Syiah Kuala, lost nearly 100 of roughly 600 lecturers, according to staff. Two islands off the northwestern coast of Aceh have broken into four, and their population of about 11,000 is believed to have dwindled to roughly 3,000.At the top regional hospital here, which serves the entire provincial population of 4 million, roughly 40 percent of the medical staff is thought to have perished.‘‘Maybe it will take five years to grow up the hospital again,’’ said Dr. Rus Munandar, director of Zainal Abidin general hospital. After 30 years of collecting the hundreds of machines needed to run the hospital, he said, ‘‘Now, in not more than 12 hours, it disappeared.’’The disaster struck the hospital particularly hard, since the earthquake first brought scores of victims there. Their wounds were being treated outside in the yard, because the electricity had gone out and nurses and doctors needed daylight to work.Then the great wave hit about 20 minutes later, roaring over patients in their beds and killing scores of them, along with members of the medical staff. But Tuesday, on the edges of the ruined hospital, a new tent hospital complex was being erected, a few among the thousands of tent clusters springing up around the city. In a matter of hours, a medical team of German soldiers built a temporary rescue center, and then began building their own sleeping quarters, showers, and recreation area in the hospital parking lot. In a corridor near what used to be the hospital’s 24-hour pharmacy, in a rare corner that had been cleaned of mud, a cluster of Indonesian volunteers peeled potatoes and carrots for a meal that would be served to patients and all volunteers.Indonesian soldiers cheered as they lifted a brick wall out of a drainage ditch. Across from the cardiology ward, the laundry of Australian soldiers was hung out to dry outside the ward they had commandeered as the sleeping quarters for their emergency medics. —NYT News Service
