By ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ (GREEK) TÜRKÇE (TURKISH)
An indescribable pain soaks the square of the seven-hundred-year-old cathedral, thousands stare meaninglessly at each other’s faces that have aged in the last seven days, sounds of prayers mix with weeping, the helplessness against death drains the light from people’s eyes.
It seems there is no one who hasn’t lost a relative in Famagusta… The town has lost its colour, thousands have lost their children, and a school has lost its voice.
Once the last shovel of dirt is thrown the process of accepting death or facing reality would begin… A sharp line was being drawn to the painful timeline of the past week during which the concepts of night and day were mixed. Those beautiful children will always be remembered with their last smiles, the embers will burn where they fall and will grow, burning from within, this indescribable and indefinable sense of absence will be passed on from one generation to the next.
The crowd that huddled together under the shade of the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque or the St. Nicholas Cathedral did not come to terms with this final farewell. The common feeling was bound on the meaninglessness of life, raging against the treachery of death, and a secret anger simmering from within, taking the form of clenched fists… Bodies of the children did not belong in those caskets…
I stared at the [team] poster of the children hung above the coffins, posing locked as one; hand in hand… Their farewell could not be in each other’s arms… I wish we could all lay them in the earth next to each other. As a team… Their sweat, their breaths, and their hair mixed as one again…
***
There were children at the square of the mosque, they had probably come to bid their friends farewell… They were clutching their parents tightly… Their school friends… The meaning of life changed for each and every one of them now… They were staring at the mounds of earth at the cemetery, trying to understand… A mother, a father and their daughter were bid farewell together. A mother and a daughter were being laid into the ground side by side… A mother bidding one of her children farewell was clinging to her other child. A child was orphaned, a father was left alone… Old people who came to their grandchildren’s funeral were silently weeping…
In a geography where measures are confused with Takbir [Translator’s note: the Islamic call ‘Allāhu ‘Akbar’ or ‘God is the greatest’], it was not the earthquake but negligence that killed our children…
We knew that and we could not cry it out in this state of sorrow, mourning and pain. In fact, even though we wanted to cry out, our strength, our power, our voice was exhausted…
***
Children do not know death, they don’t understand it, nor do they have thoughts of it.
Children do not think of death…
Those who are older, especially the old timers, no matter where they are in the world, wish to die in their own homeland…
To be laid to rest in Cyprus…
Perhaps this is our only solace… For our children, our team, all the bodies are returned to their country… To be able to bid them farewell…
And we have nothing else to console ourselves with.
We are in dismay: How are we going to keep the memory of these children alive?
I hope we will succeed…
Will that ramshackle hotel be investigated?
The hastily made announcements that “an investigation has been launched” frightens me.
Who will investigate who?
Do you really believe that the “ramshackle” hotel which turned into a mass grave for our children in the Kahramanmaraş earthquake will be investigated?
I don’t.
It would be naive to believe that a regime responsible for all this corruption will do so.
And there is little chance that the government imposed on this island, brought to power by that regime will follow up on the matter…
These statements create the impression that they aim to calm down reactions and create sympathy…
They are not sincere…
Because if they were, they would have halted the “illegal construction” they began, and would give instructions for construction discipline to be followed.
They forcefully had the man who said, “What decree, what master plan, we are behind you,” elected as the president of this country. [Translator’s note: reference to an earlier speech by Ersin Tatar to developers in Trikomo]
Who had him elected?
Those in Turkey who brag about the “construction amnesty”!
The construction amnesty was implemented by approving buildings that were not subject to any kind of inspection or that were constructed in violation of building regulations and permits.
Half of the country they have governed on their own for the last 21 years is destroyed…
The love of concrete, this order of profiteering, and back-door bargainings over master plans are nothing new to the people of this country.
If someone is to be brought to account, this must be done by ‘civil society’.
The Union of Bar Associations as well as the Chambers of Civil Engineers and Architects must go to the ruins of the hotel building and should take on the responsibility of gathering evidence.
We shall not forget!
1 – Our children
2 –The efforts of the Civil Defence team that worked day and night at Adıyaman and all the other volunteers who rushed from Cyprus to Anatolia.
3 –Education Minister Nazım Çavuşoğlu’s words, “I was there on the first flight and I will return on the last one” and his sacrificing efforts…
4 –The government which held its first meeting 6.5 hours after the earthquake, its irresponsibility in sending the first team of responders to Adıyaman 18 hours after the quake struck…
5 –The no-good “journalists”, opportunists and media chimps who irresponsibly reported misleading and false news.
6 – The racist, secessionist and pro-division minister who refused help from the south and who spewed hatred.
7 – Our people, and especially our municipalities, all of whom acted with a sense of solidarity…
8 – Our journalist friends, including our friend Aydan whose own son, survived the earthquake, who served as our eyes and ears…
9 – The artist Ali Rıza Pakdel who drew that beautiful cartoon showing a volleyball rising from the rubble into the sky.
10 –The pain, the sorrow, the sadness, the earthquake…
Source: THE LAST SHOVEL OF DIRT AND THE RAGE AGAINST THIS FINAL FAREWELL
