Türkiye earthquake 2-6-2023

I didn’t comprehend until today how I could lose this many individuals I know in less than 60 seconds!!

Tens of thousands of people were killed in the devastating earthquake that struck southern Turkey at 4:17 in the morning on February 6, 2023, when it was still early in the morning. Millions and billions of memories were also lost. It took much of me with it, as though someone had slashed through me on malice.

I have not felt well since that day, as if I were a ghost wandering aimlessly in the hereafter while marveling at the diametrically inverse relationship between myself and him.

 I believe I am among the select few who believe that death truly does love them; rather than taking them or leaving them until the appointed time, it wants to see them at every opportunity, embrace them tightly, and then, just before their final breath, release them, leaving behind some bruises on their bodies as a memento and a great deal of suffering and nectar of memories.

It’s not a blessing at all, as you might imagine. Rather, it’s like a monster you’ve heard about approaching you, opening its mouth to eat you,

the inevitable moment has struck,

Then

                       he

                                       disappears….!

simply like that! To spend the remaining time with you as you wait for his return, at which point, he will return and, after opening his mouth to devour you, leaves. Then it keeps returning again and time again. Every time he takes something from you, he leaves you with the remains to fix before starting over.

I wept for you, and every night I still visualize the moment of devastation—how the building collapsed and fell on the sixth floor,

then six more floors, pushing a mass of thousands of tons towards our building and taking it with everything inside to the abyss. Still, the face of that child, whom I kept seeing whenever I went to the city, playing on the balcony of their home in the building across from our building, visits my imagination.

Perhaps this was inevitable since the two buildings, despite being a few meters apart, were like one body. There were convergent balconies, shared conversations, smiling faces, similar cups of coffee, love in the eyes, a timid red rose that withers every morning as he waits on the other balcony for Mary to water it, and a smile that brightens the day and fills it with hope.

And that nervous girl on the fourth floor goes outside every night after sunset to talk on the phone covertly in a low voice while frequently touching her hair or biting her thumb. What did you do? He said something to make her feel uncomfortable, and she instantly started smacking the air with her palm. He also said something to enrage her, and she began to lose her mind. Women aren’t treated this way.

He might be crying right now for her too!

I also have never seen a woman wash as much laundry as the lady on the sixth floor, whom I liked to call the laundry lady! She hangs clothing two or three times in a single day, and I wish I had questioned her at the time why. But now that she is no longer a part of our world, the question will remain unanswered in my heart.

However, I used to turn aside from their balcony whenever his wife went out, and I’m convinced that her jealous husband despised me since his expression always indicated, “I hate you and I hate the fact that you’re here.” He yet had a compelling defense, pointing out how gorgeous she was, how much I adored the balcony, and how it’s not my fault since I detest walls.

Because of the intense love that brought them together, I pray they are interred together. I overheard her shouting that evening as she told him, “I want a divorce, I am fed up with this madness.” Maybe she was referring to his excessive jealousy.

He went out onto the balcony and expressed his desire to commit suicide. He said that death while knowing that you are my wife is better for me than life without you. In a dramatic scene, crazy attractive words led her to his arms and an apology was exchanged before she took him back inside, shut the door and window, and turned out the lights.

As I prepared to leave the city for the final time, this was my last chance to see them.

In the fifth story, there is the family. God, I don’t know what happened to them! There may be more, but suffice it to state that only their hall contained sleeping space for three kids.

They might have made it somehow! Yes, as far as I know, no one survived the building. However, maybe something happened that evening that forced them outside before the earthquake struck.

The two elderlies on the ninth floor have equally bizarre stories to tell. Every night they go out to the balcony to watch the balconies of our building, which includes watching me since I live on the sixth floor, right in their line of sight out in the open.

However, they were friendly, and when I accidentally ran into them in the adjoining garden that day, they weren’t hesitant to tell me the truth, Ahmed! You need to pay attention since your neighbor on the adjacent balcony is sitting right behind the wall separating you so he can hear everything you say while you are on the phone. The saying goes, “Keep your late-night love calls to yourself, my dear; such conversations do not take place on balconies.”

Since I knew the balconies on the first six floors of their building by heart, I was too bashful to ask them to cease watching my balcony after thanking them for their kind deed on my behalf.

The two buildings, or more precisely the three, fell. In actuality, there is a third building beneath us. I didn’t have a seat on the balcony across from it. I don’t know the specifics of the inhabitants’ life there, but it appears that someone did as the two buildings had no choice but to take it with them on the journey of the fall.

Completely destroyed neighborhoods, in the truest sense of the word, were caused by the earthquake along with human greed. Contractors and engineers allowed themselves to gamble with human lives while constructing modern structures that only met earthquake resistance standards on paper. Our neighbors were in one of them when it really collapsed over the heads of its residents, but that building and many others like it refused to fall unless another structure did as well and in some cases two.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     How did they end up? I keep replaying the horrifying final seconds in my head.

Did Mary pass away immediately? Or did she spend days sobbing in silence and being terrified under the debris? In this city, where the rescue teams did not show up for days, the calamity was horrible from all angles. When they finally arrived, they were unable to handle all the collapsed structures. Numerous people made it through many days. They were buried alive and eventually quietly perished under the debris.

What has happened to the barber? tailor? the employee at a supermarket? the doctor? Hotel receptionist? Is that woman who enchanted Baibars on his first visit to southern Turkey still alive? You may now be able to understand my suffering since the novel “The Moment of Baibars” has not yet been published.

How painful and illogical it is to not be able to know the fate of many people you know because they were buried without names and turned into numbers on graves and DNA packages. Until someone inquiries about the fate of a missing person, to conduct medical analyses, and he knows the number of the grave of the one he loved, only then, he can erase the number and write the name. Until the Day of the Resurrection, some of them will remain unknown. Until the Day of the Resurrection, some of them will remain unknown. How many families lost every member, and each was assigned a number?!

The majority of the action in both the first and last parts of this series—” Zero Moment” and “The Moment of Baibars”—takes place in now-destroyed cities and places. Many details have vanished and the geography of everything has changed, yet those details are still present in everyone’s memories and hearts who has ever encountered them.

To all the earthquake victims, you will live on in our hearts, and we will never forget you.

Insofar as the story is being told, every detail will live on in perpetuity…