WITH mehmed It is difficult for him to return to his city. Antakya, to his old street, to the street where he was, to the place where he last saw him, to the place where they took his daughter’s husband, to the place where, according to the young man, everything supposedly ended. Mehmet knows but does not know; No one has confirmed this, but nine months later there is little doubt: 60-year-old Mehmet lost his daughter. Meral, In the earthquake that occurred in the Southeast on February 6 Türkiye. He lost because he wasn’t there: Meral wasn’t declared dead because DNA results The condition of the body was inconclusive. Meral is officially missing.
“When we lost it we lost everything. We lost our home and our job. We lost him… Meral acceptedSo we knew from the first moment that identifying DNA would be very complicated,” explains the short, white-bearded Mehmet, looking at the ground.
It wasn’t something that came after bureaucratic torture. Mehmet and his wife took samples from their daughter’s hair and tried everything for months. Provincial government, Parliament, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Health, emergency servicesor even a television show. The prosecutor kept the hair sample. According to Mehmet, whom he learned later, the prosecutor lost. The man continues to search for his daughter; Even though hopes diminish each time.
“We wanted to try the case, but I lost everything. I don’t have money to pay due to the earthquake, I don’t have the right to want to bury my daughter with dignity. I sought answers from the government, but no one told me anything. The state abandoned us since day one. To everyone. “They abandoned us,” says Mehmet when he looks back. Behind him was a field of rocks and bricks where the nine-story building where his daughter had lived had once stood. Nine months ago, this neighborhood was full of this type of housing.
There is nothing left now: just a dog wandering around, trucks rumbling on the road at the end of the street and dust, too much dust. We have come to the end of autumn, but the heat and sun are still felt in Antakya, the second ancient city after the world. Jerusalem Where it was preached 2000 years ago christianity.
But Antakya is now gone: The earthquake that hit southeastern Turkey and northeastern Syria this year, killing more than 50,000 people, took it away, too. its walls, churches and synagogues a thousand years, their mosques Centuries are now nothing but a void of memory and centuries of history. Some mosques (the newest) are still standing, but their minarets have been dismantled.
fear of breathing
“Life has become incredibly difficult for us, you know? I have been living with my family for nine months. tentand yet I have to come to the market every day to work; while my kids are trying to study and go to school,” she explains. vegetable seller It was placed in the center of the city. Few customers: “Many people are afraid to leave the store refugee camps. There are many rumors that it is stray dogs The man said, “They started biting people because they were hungry, you know?” says or asks.
But mostly there is dust. Dust everywhere. In the air, on the ground. The half-destroyed, crumbling city lives in a gray-orange cloud of dust that is impossible to escape. Everyone is afraid of the weather.
“In order to overcome a trauma, one must get back to normal: a return to a context where there is security, order and a certain sense of comfort – explains Nilgün Yeniocak, psychologist. It’s about creating a space for traumatized people to think about what happened. But in one emergency As it was, this was impossible. The collective trauma is so great that it makes everything harder. Moreover, the state could not provide this. a favorable context for this healing that makes people traumatized chronic”.
Yeniocak states that people often see the destruction that happened that night every day, every minute, and are re-traumatized due to their fear of the weather and their living conditions. “Speaking now, my throat is already burning from the dust. There’s fear that there’s too much in the air asbestos because of the demolitions and many people are afraid of it getting cancer within a few years. Even though the government says otherwise, the air quality is very bad. I also realize how all of this affects me. “I realize that the slightest problem hinders me,” says Yeniocak, adding that sometimes it is impossible not to remember that morning. screams coming from under the rubble in the first hours, followed by silence.
among the rubble
“Down there! Give me more there, behind those rocks. Look, it looks a bit like earphones!” While a group of men are working, the sun begins to hide behind a cloud of dust. “See if you can get a little closer to ground level. There must be something on that side.”
There are several of them, and while some look on and chat, the oldest giving directions, a digger tries to drill through what was once a commercial building in the center of the city. “Today we finally reached the basement and We took out a motorcycle and a few cars destroyed. “This is a good thing for selling the metal, but it doesn’t really interest us,” says the president of a scrap dealer with a different purpose. Around them, women examine the landscape, a family passes by in a horse-drawn carriage loaded with metal, a lame dog looks around.
“There! There! Finally! We’re finally here electronics store“, shouts the oldest, puts on his gloves and orders the charlatans to go down into the hole.
Start the job: laptops destroyed, routers are still in good condition, discs and video games maybe the survivors, headphones, memory cards, cables They have not completely lost the color or filling of a fabric. computer chair, everything is available for sale. “We have been dedicating ourselves to this for months. We have no choice: Nobody helped us and we lost our previous jobs. I worked on construction sites with the man who drove the excavator, but the company closed. So I took a few young people with me and we started searching among the rubble,” says the foreman. He claims that he could not find it by chance. no body in the course of their work, but he knows people who do it.
“People in this city are stuck in a trap. The current situation is full of uncertainties, with no future. And right now it’s all piling up: People have lost their homes, their ability to make a living, their families and friends. What’s next? Life goes on, because not everyone died in the earthquake, but how does it continue? Psychologist Yeniocak asks and continues as follows: “I receive patients who wish they were dead, because everything is much harder now. and no one seems to care except here. For these people, life has lost its meaning. “As time goes by and the situation continues like this, I encounter more similar cases.”
Numbers on gravestones
On the outskirts of the city, far from the dust and thunder of Antakya’s diggers, dozens of people walk among the wood and tombstones with their heads bowed. HE Narlıca cemetery It is one of the very few countries in the world where the date of death is the same for everyone. No exceptions: everyone, February 6, 2023.
There are more than 100 buried people in Narlıca 1,000 people and besides a cemetery, this place common pit: Many tombstones have no name, no surname, or any identification other than a black number painted on a wooden board. Workers in the field are opening and closing the graves, trying to obtain DNA samples that will identify all the dead. The Turkish government promised finish tasks As soon as it coincides with the first anniversary of the earthquake.
Mehmet comes often. He says it’s hard for him, it hurts, but he comes often because he would feel guilty if he didn’t come. On that unforgettable day, someone told him that his daughter’s grave was ‘854’So he cares for her, tries to pamper her, tries to weed her, but not knowing is draining her.
“Every time I come here… what we experienced that night and that morning comes to my mind. That nightmare… Since then, I asked everywhere but no one answered me. “He hasn’t been here for nine months… How many more months will it take?” asks Mehmet, assuring that there are thousands of people in a similar situation to his. officially lost relatives.
However, the Turkish government assures that this number is only a few dozen. “For people in this situation, time becomes a prison because even if this missing relative does not appear, hope this remains,” explains Yeniocak. And this unresolved pain does not allow them to move on with their lives. It doesn’t allow them to move on, leaving them stuck between some sort of hope that this person is still alive and someone else. despairalso unconfirmed death. All this Duel “It’s much more complex and difficult to deal with.”
Meanwhile, Mehmet looks at the number ‘854’, searches for the answers he cannot find, and prays in stony silence in front of his daughter’s possible grave. “Only a father and a mother can understand what this feels like.” Not knowing where your daughter is. We lost him and don’t know where he is. Whether or not he is the person here. Nothing else matters. It’s not there anymore. “He’s gone,” the man says and repeats.
“Now that I’m older, I hope to meet him again soon. I just want it to be a place to rest. Let him have his own place. All I want is to be able to go to him, to know that he is there. own grave, talk to him, talk to him. But no… I can’t. The state turned its back on me and disappeared like a soap bubble through my fingers. It’s not there anymore. Such a simple, short sentence… But it is so difficult to live without it… God forbid it be given to anyone.”