By Rafiqur Rahman

SWARANKHOLA, Bangladesh, Nov 27 (Reuters) - "A miracle saved me but has put me into a long battle," said Nurjahan Begum, 60, the lone survivor in her family, after Bangladesh's worst storm since 1991 killed thousand of people and left many missing.

"I have stopped wiping my tears, as it is time for me to stitch my torn life together," she told Reuters this week at Swarankhola village on the coast.

Cyclone Sidr ripped through over a dozen coastal districts on Nov. 15, killing around 3,500 people and leaving thousands missing.

Two weeks after the cyclone, villagers in battered areas have started receiving relief supplies from the Bangladesh government and international agencies, mostly air-dropped by U.S. navy helicopters and the Bangladesh air force.

While scrambling to grab a food packet or container of clean water, the survivors are now also trying to collect whatever they can from the remnants of their homes, in a bid to put a roof over their heads again.

But as Nurjahan sifted through heaps of rubble she found hardly anything useable.

"I wonder why the cyclone spared me? Better if I had been killed too," she said.

Abdul Hameed, 65, said he could not stop thinking of the 26 relatives he lost in the storm.

"I have nothing but nightmares that I wish I could forget immediately," he told Reuters. "But they will not leave me and will probably haunt me to death."

Many survivors in Swarankhola and nearby villages have similar stories, as they try to recover from the trauma and rebuild their lives.

"It's not easy. The tormenting memories are an even bigger burden than shouldering corpses of loved ones," said Hameed.

"I had to bury all of them in the open yard of my home, where there had been three houses but were none after the storm," said the man, often staring blankly into the sky.

Hameed's relative Saleha Begum wept inconsolably, as she showed some graves. "Bodies were lying here. There was no one to help us to drag them to (a cemetery)," she said.

"Now, all is over, but I have been left to go on with a life without ... hope".

Nurjahan and Hameed said they escaped death by holding on to a tree.

"I don't remember how was I saved. It was a miracle," said Saleha. (Additional reporting by Azad Majumdar; Writing by Anis Ahmed; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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