In the beginning, there were a few times that Benah pretended not to know her daughter, Siti Aisyah. She just couldn’t face the questions.

One day while Benah was visiting the doctor in town the receptionist recognised the name of her sleepy Javanese village, Rancasumur – a name popularised by the nightly news. “How far away is your house from Siti’s?” the receptionist asked, leaning in conspiratorially. “Oh, it’s far,” replied Benah, “I don’t even know her.”

But at home, away from prying strangers and gossipy neighbours, the Indonesian mother could hardly sleep – the claim that her daughter had assassinated Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was all too horrifying and surreal.

Benah outside the family home. Photograph: Kate Lamb

In 2017 Siti, 26, and a Vietnamese woman, Doan Thi Huong, 30, were charged with murder, accused of smearing a lethal VX nerve agent over Kim Jong-nam’s face in Kuala Lumpur airport on 13 February.

Estranged from his younger half brother, Kim Jong-nam had spent the past decade in exile, critical of the regime he was once tipped to run. His death sparked allegations that Pyongyang had engineered an offshore political assassination – an accusation North Korea has denied. Four North Koreans are still wanted over the attack, which led to a diplomatic stand-off between North Korea and Malaysia and refocused attention on one of the world’s most isolated regimes with nuclear capabilities.

Phone calls from prison

Eighteen months later, Benah is praying it will all soon be over.

In regular phone calls from prison, Siti tells her mother they were tricked into believing they were taking part in a prank TV show. Benah explains: “She told me: ‘Mum this whole thing is a set up, I was tricked’.” Lawyers say the pair had been paid to take part in similar pranks at airports, hotels and shopping malls in the days before Kim’s death.

Siti’s lawyer, Gooi Soon Seng, is confident she will be released, arguing the evidence is circumstantial. No witnesses saw his client attack Kim, the CCTV footage did not conclusively show she did, and no traces of VX nerve agent were found on her, he says. After the incident Siti did not got to bathrooms and wash her hands, or try to flee the country, he says. Instead she went shopping, and then to work.

Siti phones her mother every few days and seems to be coping with the stress, even sometimes managing a laugh, but she feels sorry for Doan Thi Huong, who gets few visitors in prison.

Siti Aisyah with her father Asria and mother Benah at Banten Central Park during the Eid holiday in July 2016, in one of their last photos together before she was arrested. Photograph: Benah Aisyah

The Malaysian court will deliver a ruling on 16 August on whether the women will be acquitted. If not, lawyers will enter their defence. If the women are found guilty, they face the death penalty.

Siti’s calls are capped at five minutes – hardly enough time for her mother to hear the full story of how she became embroiled in the Kim saga.

The last time she saw her only daughter was when she stopped at home in January last year and announced she was going to be a TV star.

“Mum, I’m going to be an actress. I have an offer and my role is to play tricks,” says Benah, recalling her daughter’s words. “I asked her to make sure it was halal [permissible in Islam], and she said ‘Of course mum, it is halal.’”

“Finally she was on TV,” says Benah, “But not how I expected.”

Fellow suspect Doan was born to a poor family in northern Vietnam, her father is a janitor and her mother died last year from heart disease. She had been the great hope for her family, who had put together all their savings so she could go to school in Hanoi.

At 18, she left Nghia Binh village to start a pharmacy course, but soon dropped out. Doan has kept mainly quiet about her personal life throughout the trial, but did express fears for the safety of her father, who has been able to visit her only once. The Guardian attempted to speak to her family but the request was denied by the Vietnamese authorities.

Trying not to worry

Benah and her husband, Asria, live in a modest yellow house in a West Java village skirted by rice paddies and banana trees. Each day Asria sets out on foot to sell ground spices, turmeric and ginger, while Benah looks after the house.

Neither has left the country before. After Siti was arrested the foreign ministry helped arrange a passport, but Benah says going to Kuala Lumpur is a daunting idea.

“I don’t think I could go there [to Kuala Lumpur] alone, I know nothing about the streets or where to go. Where would I sleep and eat?” asks Benah, “I’m from the village so the city is a culture shock for me.”

The rice fields near Siti’s childhood home. Photograph: Kate Lamb

After finishing primary school – where she excelled at maths and religious studies – Siti moved to Jakarta in her early teens to work in a clothing factory. A few years later she married the owner’s son, and gave birth to Rio when she was 18. The child lives with his father, but is in touch with his grandparents and knows his mother is in prison.

When her marriage broke down in 2012, Siti moved to the Indonesian city of Batam, a ferry ride away from Singapore, where she worked in a clothing store and dreamt of becoming a makeup artist.

As the court ruling looms, Benah is trying not to worry, and is praying her daughter will soon be released.

When Siti comes home, she says, they will cook and recite the Qur’an together, and sleep in the same room so they are close.

“I believe she will be freed because she is not guilty. She never intended to kill anyone,” says Benah, “She is my daughter and I believe her.”