While Hussan was told 175 people were accompanying her, when she turned up to the Sumatra port of Bandar Lumpung, more than 400 people were herded onto an unnamed boat with conditions worse than a 17th century slave ship. "I told everyone, this boat will not arrive in Australia," she said. "I was afraid and I cry but what can we do, there is no money to go back."
Adding to the confusion were scores of gun-toting Indonesian police, she said, who seemed to be collaborating with the smugglers to keep scared travelers on the boat. Hussan boarded the battered 19-meter Sumatran fishing boat and embarked on a well-established people-smuggling route -- 36 hours from Sumatra to Australia's Christmas Island, 360 kilometers away. In Hussan's case, the engine cut out hours after the journey began. It was just minutes before water began gushing in, and the boat broke apart.
Life jackets from the dead
"Maybe about five minutes I open my eyes and found myself under the boat. I see many children die quickly, quickly."
Hussan and her son, two of 44 survivors, lived only because they took life jackets from people who had died, and clung to broken wooden planks for 20 hours, drinking water from the sky. They were saved by fishing boats in the morning and taken first to Bogor and then to Jakarta, where they still remain, four months later, seething at the smugglers. "They are just liers. This is just about the money," she says.
While Sweden, Finland and Denmark have come to the rescue of the survivors, Hussan, her son and four other people with family in Australia are still waiting for a decision to be made on their status. "I want to learn English very well and want to speak with Larry King live to tell him the story about myself. I want the world to know."
Quassey has since been arrested.