Incense curls up from a smouldering stick in Gao Xianying’s hand as she bows inside the Yonghe Temple, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Beijing. She has come to pray for the daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter who boarded a plane that, two years ago today, never landed.
“You will definitely come back,” she says in a plaintive voice. “Please come back.”
Ms. Gao falls to her knees, and bows her forehead to the stone surface of the temple courtyard. Tears stain her cheeks as she rises and walks toward a temple to offer more petitions to Buddha, and light more incense with roughly 100 others — mothers and children — who have also come here to commemorate a grim anniversary.
The fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has become the most puzzling mystery in modern aviation history. Its disappearance en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing triggered a massive international search that continues to this day, with ships using advanced instruments to peer deep to the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean — an expensive quest to survey 120,000 square kilometres of remote seabed that has so far yielded nothing. The vessels are expected to complete their work by July, and Australian authorities are confident they will soon find the plane.
So far, though, only the smallest of traces have emerged: a flaperon – a section of an airplane’s wing – found on the island of Réunion, and two other pieces still being tested to see if they came from the missing Boeing 777.
For many families, the idea of vanishing relatives has been so hard to accept that they simply refuse to do so. In China, where the largest number of passengers lived — 153 of 239 — some accuse authorities and Malaysia Airlines of withholding the darkest of secrets about the real whereabouts of their loved ones.
Dai Shuqin still travels daily to the Malaysia Airlines office in Beijing to petition for the five vanished members of her family. Her recent requests have contained just one sentence addressed to the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines: “Please make arrangements for families to meet the passengers as soon as possible.”
She has been mocked by people who say “we are psycho, crazy, bad people,” she said.
But with no hard evidence to the contrary, she continues to believe they are alive.
Others keep memories alive in different ways. Ms. Gao has moved to Beijing from Guoyang, 900 kilometres from the city, to maintain pressure on the search. Hu Xiufang keeps paying the mobile phone bill for her son, who was with his wife and daughter on Flight 370. In February, the bill showed a strange call made in the U.S. Ms. Hu repeatedly called the phone, but could not get through. Even so, she does not believe it was a billing error.
“I believe they are alive and well – but the problem is, nobody will go there to help rescue them,” she says.
The disbelief is reflected in lawsuits brought against Malaysia Airlines and its insurers. In one joint action filed Saturday in U.S. federal court by the estates of 44 Chinese MH370 passengers, the missing are referred to as “lost” or “declared dead by Malaysia.”
It’s a backdrop of uncertainty that threatens high emotions as court proceedings begin.
Lawyers for the airline have prepared for a gloves-off fight. On Dec. 30, 2015, the estate of Muktesh Mukherjee and Xiaomo Bai filed suit seeking compensation for the Canadian couple’s “mental terror and mental anguish,” their funeral expenses, and damages suffered by their two young children, Miles and Mirav.
In a response filed Monday, Malaysia Airlines denies everything from the couple’s residency in the U.S. — where they owned a condominium and bank accounts — to the fact that a U.S. court declared them dead or that Miles and Mirav are their children. Malaysia Airlines underwent a corporate restructuring in late 2014 and the new company, while still flying as Malaysia Airlines, also repeatedly denies any relation to the airline whose jetliner went missing.
How much heartbreak re-erupts in court “all depends on how Malaysia Airlines wants to handle these things,” said Malay Mukherjee, who with his wife is now raising their two orphaned grandchildren in Delhi.
For the children, the two-year mark has brought an easing in pain. Mirav, nine, now “treats it differently, saying ‘my mother would have liked this, my father would have liked this.’ Not getting emotionally upset all the time, but trying to bring back good memories,” Mr. Mukherjee said.
As for him, “it feels surreal that nothing has come out — in this world of technology, that they can’t even find an aircraft. That, naturally, doesn’t give us closure. We think of it every day: what really happened?”
What he clings to, instead, are the ways Muktesh lives on in his children.
“We definitely see a lot of our son in the younger one” – Miles, now four.
“His naughtiness, the way he speaks, and of course his toys, playing with toy soldiers,” Mr. Mukherjee said. “Whenever we are together, we are reminded of Muktesh in his early days.”
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