When Saadet celebrates her 11th birthday in a few days, it will be the first without her mother. On the night of the devastating earthquakes on February 6 in Turkey and Syria, falling pieces of concrete smashed the girl’s legs – and took her mother away.
Almost three months later, the girl is still unable to stand on her feet. She has already had three surgeries and at least two more surgeries are pending, says her father Serkan Agri.
Their broken bones hold splints together. For everything else she needs her father. He hasn’t been able to leave his daughter alone since the night he had to leave his dead wife to take Saadet and her eleven-year-old brother Mahmut to the hospital. Going back to work and leaving the children in the house of the family who just stayed with them near Antakya is currently impossible.
Guilt and fear dominate the emotional world
A child psychologist, employed in the earthquake area for the Turkish state and not mentioned by name in this text, has observed behavior like Saadet’s in a number of children. “Once basic needs like food and shelter are met, the emotional wounds surface.”
Children who have lost loved ones often feel guilty about having survived themselves. Many felt constant anxiety, became depressed, or suffered from frequent crying fits. He also met suicidal children in his work.
In addition to the psychological consequences, there are also physical ones. The people who have not left the earthquake area often live in tents or – more rarely – in a container. Fleas and scabies are common in many of the tented camps, explains pediatrician Ilker Salar. Many people still have no access to running water or functioning sanitation facilities.
asbestos in ruins
The same goes for nine-year-old Yakup. His family lives in a tent on the edge of a meter-high heap of rubble on a road to Antakya. There is a toilet, but no shower. The boy’s face and hair are gray from the dust that rises as hundreds of trucks dump the debris from the devastated city here every day.
Environmental organizations, doctors and human rights activists have been raising the alarm about the clearing practice for weeks and warning of toxic substances in the rubble, above all asbestos. “People who live so close to the rubble are very likely to all develop lung cancer in a few years,” warns Nihat Sahbaz of the Turkish Medical Association in Kahramanmaras.
Yakup knows nothing about this. He and the other children, whose families have also pitched tents here, play with car tires and all sorts of other materials that can be found. They don’t go to school, they haven’t opened up yet.
The Turkish government had actually promised that classes would resume on April 24 in the earthquake areas. The school opposite the house of the Agri siblings is also still closed.
Back to normal – in vain
That would be particularly important right now, says the child psychologist. After the traumatic experiences, it helps the children above all to return to structure and normality as quickly as possible. In principle, much more psychological care is needed in the earthquake region, but also people who create offers for children. “And parents have to talk to their children about what’s happening, the children need that.”
Father Serkan would have liked to have spared his children the terrible news of their mother’s death. “The children later said they knew because we cried so much,” says the young father. Both children were hospitalized for more than two months. After she was released, Saadet really wanted to go to her mother.
At the grave, the girl, who had hardly uttered a sentence in the previous weeks, then started to talk. Since then she has been more alive again, says her father. Serkan wants to leave the region with his children in the coming days and move to Bursa, 1000 kilometers away, where they can live with relatives. “A fresh start, forced.”
