I can remember it as if it were yesterday. At 4.30am on the 26th of December 2004, my phone woke me up ... It was my mother on the line from Colombo frantically saying there was severe flooding in the east of Sri Lanka and my grandmother had been affected. The rest of that snowy Boxing Day will always be a blur to me as reports came in of the tsunami.

I took one of the first flights from London out to Sri Lanka still unsure as to the gravity of the whole situation. The plane was half empty - it seemed there had been at least 150 last-minute cancellations. Touching down in Colombo, I was struck by the air of gloom in the airport - the staff seemed almost glad to see the arrival of someone to their country after the rapid departure of so many tourists. In Colombo everywhere from rickshaws to private houses was flying the traditional white flag of mourning.

After an arduous 12-hour drive to the east to search for my grandmother, what confronted us was beyond description. The sheer brute force of nature was easy to see. In the face of such raw energy it was very apparent that man is but a helpless creature. People, many in an almost catatonic state, were sifting through the destroyed remains of their homes. The detritus occasionally offered up possessions like mangled bicycles or touching mementoes of a life before the horror swept through.

All too often, you could smell the decomposing remains of those who hadn't been quick enough to escape. On one occasion, the search and rescue workers ran out of burial cloth and had to make do with bed sheets and other bits of material. Eventually the number of bodies became so great, that mechanical excavators were used to dig the graves and dump trucks were used to bury the bodies. On average, everyone in the first couple of days of the disaster must have individually handled 100 bodies - young children, pregnant mothers, elderly people. The damage was so tremendous that even five weeks later, human remains were still being discovered.

The east of Sri Lanka bore the brunt of the tsunami with the village of Marathumunai being the first to be hit. In one part of the village, almost 3000 people were killed - the only evidence that there had ever been homes there were the slabs of concrete that had been the floors.

This unprecedented disaster robbed the country of children and elders. It was striking how few children there were in all the villages I visited along this 25 mile-stretch on the east coast. Parents told stories of how they tried to hold on to their children, but were forced to let go when the waves crashed into them. Young bodies were tossed helplessly and washed up days later, crushed under the force of the water.

"I could not hold on to him," one grieving father at one of the camps cried to me. "I should not be alive. What kind of father am I that I live while my child, who looked to me to protect him, lies buried somewhere?" One of the first rescue workers on the scene told of how he found four small children clinging to their father buried underneath the rubble of their house.

Elderly people also were a rare sight. They, too, were unable to run fast enough and were either swept away or crushed in their beds. Whole generations were lost.

There are moving stories of courage, like the primary school teacher who tried to get his 40 charges to safety by helping them on to the roof of their school. But the wave claimed all their lives. When the teacher was found he was clutching a child under each arm, unwilling to relinquish his responsibility to the children he loved even when his own life was at stake. Villagers still speak of him in the same terms they would a saint. He could have easily escaped but resolutely stood and faced death rather than abandon those he had sworn to protect.

DIVIDED ISLAND PULLS TOGETHER

It is said that every Sri Lankan has been affected directly or indirectly by the tsunami. There are whole families (30 - 40 members) who have been wiped out. I was able to find my grandmother, but lost five members of my extended family. My aunt who was six months pregnant miraculously survived because her husband managed to get her to safety to avoid the rising water, losing his life in the process. Today, I find it hard to tell my three-year-old cousin that his father died in order to save him.

There is something humbling about visiting a refugee camp to hand out relief aid, and the person who receives it is a relative of yours or a friend whom you played with when you were young. How can you explain giving out clothes and food as charity to the people you know? It is also very distressing. How do you comfort them? How do you explain to your family why some members died and others didn't? How do you comfort parents who had to make a choice about which of their children to save?

Yet, amongst all the carnage there was evidence of real human goodness, generosity and humility. The number of tremendous people who gathered to provide support and assistance at such a time of need was proof of a higher spiritual cause that united us in the humanity of mankind.

The response of the local people and organisations was amazing. Everywhere you went people tried to help in their own way. For once regardless of ethnicity, religion or language, people united to help each other. "These are my fellow countrymen. The wave was indiscriminate in its action, so why should we discriminate in our response," was the most common expression.

I remember thinking to myself that these words gave light at a time of darkness.

Many agencies are now wrapping up their tsunami programmes and going home, but the work isn't finished yet. Not everyone has been given a house and a new livelihood. To make matters worse, Sri Lanka's escalating conflict has shifted attention away from tsunami reconstruction. Four years on, we remember that for a very brief period the tsunami achieved in a couple of minutes what people have tried and failed to do for the past 57 years - to unite the Sri Lankan people.

Four years on, it is this that we need to think about when we remember those who perished. Cities can be rebuilt. It is the wounds of the heart and the mind which need to be addressed. Perhaps those who perished can serve as a reminder of the spirit of unity we need to practise. For it can only be through putting aside our differences, that we can help rescue Sri Lanka. It will require the combined effort of everyone to heal the scars.

Second photo shows the destruction in Marathumunai. Both photos by Amjad Saleem

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