Ahmet has been sleeping with 12 other family members for a week in a small tent seven meters high in Nurdagi, southeastern Turkey, not knowing when he can return home after Monday’s earthquake.
He has not lost his home, but fear speaks louder and he refuses to return to his home, modest and small, which seems to have resisted, between two buildings that have completely collapsed.
The rest of his family, with whom he sleeps, has lost everything. Ahmet’s parents’ house is a mess, his brother’s has been badly damaged by the earthquake which left a trail of destruction in the small town of Nurdagi, where not even the municipal seat survived.
The 13 people – children, adults and the elderly – all sleep together in a compartment of the AFAD tent (a disaster relief organization set up by the Turkish state) of about seven square meters, glued together, between blankets of different colors.
There are potatoes, apples and leeks in the front of the tent. Inside there is a space where other foods accumulate. In an adjoining tent, itself made from blankets and plastic, several chairs are arranged around a wood-burning stove.
Inside, Ahmet’s father sits with his back to the entrance, his face in his hands. He doesn’t react when Ahmet, a factory worker, lifts the blanket that serves as the door of that tent, signaling that his father is not well.
In that open space, everyone gathers around the campfire during the day. There is no light, no water, but especially no bathrooms.
“It’s what we need most. The cold costs a little, but the bathrooms are what we miss the most”says Erhan, Ahmet’s neighbor, who also meets there during the day, but sleeps in his car at night.
Like Ahmet and his relatives, many other survivors are now living in those AFAD tents or others put together with their own hands, both in Nurdagi, Gaziantep district, and other cities in southeastern Turkey affected by the earthquake, in a region surrounded by mountains , which are painted white by then and where the temperature drops to negative values at night.
Stories of loss are repeated there. Of dead neighbors, of relatives that have not yet been found. Ahmet heard screams through the rubble for help in the early days.
“Now no more voices are heard. No voices have been heard for days. In time, the screams disappeared. On the fourth day they were heard no more”account.
As for the future, the two neighbors can’t even imagine.
“I can’t make plans for now. I can’t think about the future”says Erhan.
By the fire, 13-year-old Berkay is resting on a wooden pallet, his leg in plaster. With an easy smile, he plays with a cat looking for leftover food. He broke his leg after the earthquake, he tells Lusa.
“I was sleeping and heard noises. I tried to leave the house, but when I realized that the stairs had collapsed, I decided to go to the living room and jump from the balcony”, from the apartment on the second floor, he says. Berkay’s grandmother points out bruises on her ankle: she, Berkay’s sister and an aunt also jumped from the balcony. “Luckily we’re all still alive”claims Berkay’s grandmother.
The death toll from the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria a week ago has passed 35,000, authorities from both countries announced on Monday. Turkish authorities said they had recorded 31,643 deaths in the country.
Source: DN
