Balinese villagers in mourning for their lost relatives

Two-year-old Apriliana is racing around the family compound, a dark-haired little imp in a dirty blue dress. She stops and clings to her mother, whose strained smile is beginning to crack. Apriliana wants to know when her father is coming home. She is too young to grasp that he will never be back.

Ketut Nana Wigiya, a taxi driver, was outside the Sari Club in Kuta nine days ago. It was the best place in town to pick up fares, and for more than a decade the coveted spot had belonged to a group of families from a nearby village, Kepaon.

Eight men from the village were waiting in line that night. All were friends. Not one survived.

Kepaon, three miles east of Bali's tourist enclave of Kuta, is a community in shock. Eight families are gripped by terrible grief, while scores of other villagers – relatives, friends and neighbours – are in mourning. Five bodies have yet to be found. Hindu ceremonies are being performed to summon home the souls of the men.

Mr Wigiya, 30, was not supposed to be at the Sari that night. Usually he drove a taxi around town, but it was being repaired so he took over his uncle's spot on Jalan Legian, Kuta's main street. He and the other men took the full force of the blast as they stood outside their cabs, sandwiched between the nightclub and a minivan packed with explosives.

In Kepaon, his wife, Wayan Rasti, had been sleeping fitfully. The bomb, audible even at that distance, woke her up. A family member broke the news that it had gone off outside the Sari Club. "I knew my husband was there," she says in a soft voice, rocking back and forth on a plastic chair under a mango tree. "He didn't come home. I knew he was dead." Mr Wigiya's elder brother, Made Dugul, searched for him for three days without respite, helped by several cousins. They braved the dreadful scenes of carnage and mayhem at the bomb site. They checked the area's five hospitals and inspected every body in the overcrowded morgue at Sanglah, near the capital, Denpesar.

"We looked everywhere but we couldn't find him," says Mr Dugul, a dignified man in a black sarong and black udeng, the Balinese headscarf. "I don't know what to think. I want to cry, but I have no water in my eyes. I can't express my sadness. We were so very close. We spoke to each other every day."

Mr Dugul appears utterly bereft. He sits straight-backed, fingering a keyring shaped like a purple lizard as if it were a string of rosary beads. "We keep praying and looking, but I'm sure my brother must be dead already," he says. "He has become like ash."

Wayan Rasti has been crying almost non-stop. She cries when she wakes up in the morning. She cries when she is alone. And she cries when Apriliana and her seven-year-old sister, Linda, ask where their father is. Linda is old enough to know that something is wrong.

"I keep worrying about their future because I don't have a job," says Mrs Rasti. She plans to look for work as a seamstress. There is no social security system. The family will help her out as far as they can.

Two doors down in Kepoan's main street, a large group of relatives and village elders have gathered at the house of I Nyoman Mawa to call his spirit home. They have already performed a similar ceremony at Sanglah Hospital and at the site where the Sari Club stood. Mr Mawa's body is still missing, and they believe his soul is trapped in limbo between the physical and spiritual worlds.

On a raised dais in a white-tiled alcove in the courtyard of their home, Mr Mawa's family have built a shrine. On a table stands a gold-framed photograph of him smiling broadly, together with bowls of fruit, two cushions and a bottle of water.

Mr Mawa, 42, had waited for fares outside the Sari Club every night for 11 years. When he failed to come home, his 17-year-old son, Made Agus Antara, went to look for him. "There was nothing at all," says his wife, Ni Made Kitik. "I know he is dead. These people are so evil. My husband was a good man." Another driver, Ketut Sutajijya, 34, is also presumed dead. His family are planning to cremate him tomorrow. Instead of a body, they will burn symbols such as flowers and some of his possessions. "I feel so sad and confused," says his wife, Made Ratniti. "I don't know who to be angry to, or who to blame."

Asked who they believe planted the bombs, the relatives shrug and shake their heads. "I know nothing about politics or religion," says Made Dugul. "I just wish Bali to be as it was in the beginning. I want the tourists to come here in peace."

Wayan Dugul says: "All the people in the village are very sad and curse the bombers. We can't accept that our families have been attacked."