- By Nick Beake
- in Ördekdede, south-eastern Turkey
Mehmet and Fatma Meter have actually buried 7 of their family after the earthquake
Warning – this piece includes information that some readers might discover upsetting.
We review the city of Gaziantep and drive deeper into the snow-flecked mountainside of south-eastern Turkey.
It is significantly remote surface, yet it feels so familiar – town after town bears the exact same disastrous scars.
We stop at a little location we learn is called Ördekdede and stumble into a Turkish neighborhood where their dead now surpass the living.
This is a grim brand-new reality for numerous dots of the map throughout the substantial passage of this area where the ground shook most strongly.
The last individuals we anticipate to discover amongst the survivors in this remote area – gathering around a fire, drinking tea – are 2 Londoners.
Mehmet and Fatma Meter are from Finsbury Park, north London.
“This earthquake has actually damaged whatever,” says Fatma, as she cleans tears with her headscarf.
“We shown up in Turkey prior to the earthquake for my sibling’s funeral service,” Mehmet describes.
“But now we have actually needed to bury 7 of our family.”
They take us on a journey to record where each valuable life was lost.
So we choose our method through their annihilated neighborhood, which is now a monstrous assortment of damaged bricks, twisted metal and dirty debris.
Fatma leads us along the course prior to stopping, indicating a corner of the wreckage where she says the very first of 3 loved ones died.
“We attempted to save them. The voice was originating from there, so [we] hurried to help. Ali was yelling from under the debris, ‘save me, save me’.
“We saved Ali. But Shemse, Kamel, Ayshe, there was no response, absolutely nothing.”
Kamel and Semse were guy and spouse, their child Ayshe simply 16. Their 20-year-old old kid, Alican, is the only survivor from your house and is now in medical facility with a damaged leg.
“Just one day prior to we consumed supper together,” Fatma says.
“One day later on all of these individuals pass away. How can I think it?”
Fatma shakes her head as she relives how she assisted to bring the bodies from the particles and took them away for the burial.
Among the numerous loads of bricks now crowned with a twisted piece of corrugated iron are the remains of Mehmet’s dad’s house.
It’s tough to envision anybody going out alive.
But 87-year-old Abdi Meter did.
“His chair fell versus a wall and opened a method for him to leave. I can’t think he did it.”
It is a couple of actions up the roadway where Mehmet drops in his tracks and exposes the photo in his mind that is haunting him.
The picture of his young nephew Umut Efe’s body.
“A couch was pressing him up towards the sky. And then I saw his face looking me in the eyes. He had actually passed 2 days earlier and his colour had actually altered. He was almost 5.”
The memory is too raw and he waves his hand in front of his face prior to turning away sobbing.
If there is any possible little grace in this scene of ruination, it’s that the earthquake struck in winter season when less houses in the town were inhabited.
During the summer season, it’s a various story as members of the Turkish diaspora in France, Germany in addition to the UK go back to see loved ones and delight in a nourishing dosage of fond memories from their youths.
Just along the roadway we discover Siho Yukselir, a truck driver who has actually invested the last thirty years calling London home, residing in Golders Green.
Siho Yukselir, a truck driver from London, stands outside the wreckage of his family’s house
As he considers the wreckage of his own family’s house, he communicates the shock and anger that’s characterised numerous individuals we have actually satisfied over the previous couple of days.
“I’m really really shocked. I can’t stop weeping. I was born in this town” he informs us.
“I lost whatever. No insurance coverage, no absolutely nothing and the federal government’s not assisting. You need to do it yourself once again.”
For now, in the depths of sorrow and fatigue, reconstructing this shattered neighborhood seems like a frustrating, perhaps difficult, job.
Before we leave Ördekdede, we ask Fatima and Mehmet when they will fly back to the UK.
“How can I do it? I do not understand. How can I return to London?”
With Turkey in this desperate state, she cannot leave her homeland.
Additional reporting by Naomi Scherbel-Ball and Doğu Eroğlu.
