Like hundreds of thousands of people in southeastern Turkey, he was fast asleep when the world began to shake. I don’t know how to explain such horror to someone who has never felt an earthquake; much less, one of the largest ever recorded in this region of the planet.
It’s completely surreal.
The floor and walls shook, buckled, and as I ran down the three stories to the street, my only thought was to get as far away from the buildings as possible and as quickly as possible.
They were 70 seconds of the worst terror I have ever felt.
When I calmed down a bit and realized that I had survived the earthquake, I also realized that it was raining; I felt cold and my legs were like jelly, as if they were not part of my body. Everyone around me was screaming.
It took me a while, but after the urgency of the second earthquake, I finally found a place to take refuge: a school.
Along with hundreds of others, we sit, lie down, or stand on the property’s basketball court; Only then were we able to tell our families that we were safe.
Then I caught up on work and began to appreciate how I could help, how I could tell them what was happening, how to pay tribute to the heroic people who were doing everything they could to help me and help thousands like me.
I spent the night of February 6 in a government-run shelter.
I felt some tremors, but the place was comfortable, had hot drinks and some food, as well as a space to sleep.
Now I am in the office. I’m trying to catch up and recover from the heartbreaking loss of a colleague.
Many are injured and have lost family members and, in some cases, their homes as well. Others, like a member of my team, miraculously survived in Hatay.
It is an indescribable sadness.
One minute we were sleeping, and the next, we were part of one of the biggest catastrophes on the planet.
I scream inside with despair, sorrow and fear. But I look at my colleagues, my neighbors and my friends, who are much more affected than I am, and they inspire me to keep going.
* International Organization for Migration