Presentation

The Earthquake

I still remember like yesterday. I was traveling by bus from Istanbul to my hometown, Zonguldak in august 17 th 1999 It was around 3 am early in the morning. And our bus stopped to take a break for stopover. The trip was so long and we needed to take a break to rest for a while. While we were up to leave the stop place the ground started to shake, it was shake intensely. First of all I thought an accident happened and then I realized it was not an accident. It was exactly an earthquake. It stopped after a while and we kept going on our trip. But I felt something inside of my heart like a fear.

When I got my home in Zonguldak, I heard that the center of the earthquake was Izmit where the city was my mom lived in. When I heard it first time, I didn’t think something could be happened to my mom. So I went to bed to sleep. And there is a belief in my culture if something is happened bad there is no way not to hear soon. After I woke up in the afternoon I watched the news on the TV and I saw how the earthquake was bigger than I thought. I tried to call my mom immediately and my sister but it seemed that there was no way to reach them at that moment. I couldn’t reach her despite all my efforts and then I tried to call police station to get information about the city where my mom was living and I got very bad news from the police officers in that area.

I felt like that I could run there. I had to get there the city as soon as possible but there was no transportation. The police closed the freeway to public and they were just allowing the cars for rescuing the people on freeway so I tried to get there from mountain road. It took seven hours to get there it was more than regular traveling time. And finally I was there. When I got there I was shocked by the scene that I saw. I was just standing and looking at my house. It was too hot but very cold wind was going through my body. I was just trying to understand the situation that I was in. I was just looking at the house without moving. Actually it was not the whole house that I saw. It was actually the rest of the house because it was collapsed. I just could see the roof of the house. I couldn’t think anything that time. And then my mom’s picture came to my mind and some memorizes with her and me. I was crying very quietly but my heart was screaming inside. There was a lot of pain and tears in there. A father was crying for his kids, a woman was crying for her husband and everybody was searching for their relatives under the wreck of their houses. I had to forget the pain of my mom in my heart to help the people who were trying to pull outside the people who under the wreck. I got a man out under the wreck. He was injured, thirsty, scared and in shock. But he seemed he never lost his hope for life. When I hold his hand I saw his eyes were shining. Seeing him hopeful took some of my pain away. I also helped for my mom’s body to take out from under the wreck. While I was reaching her body I knew that there was no way to get her out alive from there. Ten days after I got there, finally I found my mom’s body, she was still so beautiful and she was smiling to me. I had no hope for her being alive. At least to find her body made me happy. Because I knew that there were a lot of people who couldn’t even find their relatives’ body. At least she has a grave to visit her and go pray for her now.

After this unusual event, I have understood how short and meaningless life. I have understood we shouldn’t delay our plan to next day; she had a lot plans for future but future wouldn’t come for her and I have understood if you love somebody don’t wait for tomorrow to tell I love you because the death is waiting for you out of there so it might come earlier than tomorrow. It really did and I couldn’t tell her `I love you` last time.