Just immediately without any warning the earth shakes, and people stop to stand. There is a building under them looking as if an imaginary hand is crushing it. It is choking all of the space out of the edifice like it somehow has the consistency of an old aluminium can. The building contorts to itself, bends, suffocates, and then falls apart, melting concrete into a cloud of dust.
Mother sees this happening outside of her window, and she immediately runs, down from her apartment on the eighth floor, and straight into the emergency exit.
This happened just seven hours ago. She is doing it again. When Mother was shook awake by the first earthquake it was a little bit past four o’clock in the morning. She woke up immediately and called her husband at the hospital and stood outside with all the neighbours despite the layers of snow and stared aghast at all of the buildings made into rubble right in front of her. Teyzes were yelling the names of their nephews. People were standing wrapped in blankets unable to do anything but stare ahead. Mother prayed to Allah because her building survived but she had no time to process it or understand. The earth shook, and her neighbourhood was destroyed.
Now another earthquake is happening and just as Mother felt it was safe to return home. She asks out-loud why this is happening, knowing she is in the earshot of no one. She wonders if she should have stayed with her sister but she wants to call and make sure her sister and the family is still alive. She has to fight her need to check up on everyone she loves because she has no time for it. She has to run downstairs and ensure that she survives.
There was once a fully walled castle in the centre of Gaziantep. It was a Hittite observatory that was developed into a castle by the Romans. The edifice was over two millennia old. And yet no existence no matter the age is guaranteed eternity. A tremor struck the southwest of Turkey and in just a few jitters of land an entire piece of history was obliterated.
History has no guarantee to survive. It is not the same as eternity.
So many people are without homes. So many people don’t know where to go. So many people are waiting to understand what has happened, or why it has happened to them. The truth is there is no answer because there is no reason. Nature destroys and human lives end and nature spawns new life and humans adapt.
But for it to happen in Mother’s very vicinity, to happen on the same day, in the same part of the world, over and over again. This earthquake is ending but Mother wonders if another earthquake will hit just as she tries to sleep.
Mother’s hands are shaking, and they remain shaking yet.