Losing

Losing Our Virginity

"I watched my husband die. There was nothing I could do for him. My baby was crying and I had to find something to drink for her." The woman is tired. Her eyes are dull though she smiles at me through the television screen. She looks away and plays with the corner of the white hospital sheets. Disturbed, I watch her, wanting desperately to get up and do something else, maybe take a shower, but I can't move. With her hair tied back neatly, brushed for the cameras, her make-up light yet there, she compels me to listen to her. I wonder about how she felt when they put make-up on her. "There was something on my legs and I couldn't move them, so I had to grope around me for something to quiet my crying baby. I think it was a miracle, I found her bottle. It was as if God had reached out to help me. The milk had gone sour but I didn't care. She drank it without stopping and wanted more when it was gone. She cried so loud. I cried when I finally gave her my urine to drink." She smiles at me again and adds "God never left us during those 96 hours. I'm grateful for that. I thank Him for letting me live for my baby." Someone brings the baby to her. It's a girl, maybe 16 maybe 20 months old, and as she holds her baby to her, tears rolling down her face, I turn the television off.

The woman is one of many people who survived the August 17^th 1999 Earthquake

in Turkey. I am also one of the survivors. My experience with the earthquake can never match those of the woman who captivated me on television, but I too am a victim in my own way. The earthquake, measured at 7.4 on the Richter scale, happened some 90 kilometers away from my home in Istanbul; an apartment on the third floor of a 5 storey building. Our home shook for 45 seconds. At the time I was 7 months pregnant, a pregnancy I cherished after 5 years of treatments and 3 miscarriages. My husband and I woke up at 3 a.m. with a loud whirring sound that grew louder and louder taking the lamps, the chairs and the bookcase along with it for a ride. I jumped up from the couch where I had fallen asleep and ran for cover, crouching against the side of a doorway, holding my belly. I remember chanting 'Oh my God! Oh my God' several times as my husband tried to soothe me by saying it was okay. "It's over now," he said as the shaking and the horrifying whir slowly quieted down. I relaxed and started to stand up when we shook again. I crouched immediately and this time my husband and I were both chanting. Our two cats were lying flat on the floor, a little ahead of us; ears pulled back, eyes darting around in panic. Then finally the earthquake was over. That night and the following three nights we slept in the children's playground in front of our house. We slept on blankets and pillows brought from home, among a sea of women, children, men, dogs and cats, all afraid to enter the place they once associated with security. I tried to sleep on bumpy earth that blankets could not remedy and people walked by and smiled sadly at me and my 7-month belly.

Looking back on the two years that have gone by, two years with many changes in my life, I can see how those 45 seconds changed so much of who I am. The earthquake killed thousands and thousands of people and everyday we watched on television as dead bodies were pulled out from under the rubble; dust mixed with blood, clothes torn, eyes frozen in fear. We watched each rescue in hope that we might catch someone coming out alive and we hid our tears from other people in the room when they did. We bought toilet paper, sanitary napkins, diapers, and medicine to send to the real victims, the ones who had lost their families, their homes and their lives under the rubble. I had a pair of Guess jeans, which no longer fit me; hadn't fit in fact for years. Those jeans promised me that one day I would lose weight and be able to wear them, be my old self again. I am ashamed when I think of how long I contemplated putting those jeans into the bag of clothes I was going to send to the earthquake relief site.

Sadly we quickly lost trust in the earthquake relief campaigns as news came over the television of people selling bottles of water at horrendous prices; water that had been sent for free distribution to victims. We watched as cameras zoomed in on dirty, dusty, rubble filled streets turned to mud from the flooding caused by the rising of the sea. Streets where loaves of bread, that had been sent for relief swam unclaimed in the mud. We grew weary of calls for donations and feebly attempted to follow up and check up on the validity of a few, finally deleting any e-mails or changing any channels that even mentioned earthquake relief. We wanted to go there, to help people who needed it, to take our food, clothes and medicine and distribute them ourselves. Friends who had been there told us of the horrible smell of rotting bodies yet uncovered from under the ruins, and of how they took long hot showers when they got home desperate to rid themselves of the smell, the stench of shattered lives. They told us not to go.

We knew there was a need for translators. I spoke two languages, my husband four. We were the perfect candidates and we were torn. We wanted to go, to be there and help. We were ready to do anything and there I was, 7 months pregnant. In my condition going there was definitely out of the question and I didn't want my husband to go either. I was afraid of another earthquake, an aftershock. I didn't want him to die out there and felt afraid I wouldn't know what to do if an earthquake hit when I was in the house alone. So we didn't go, buried our guilt by actively watching and keeping in touch through the television. After a few weeks, we forbid each other from watching the news because it had changed us; made us sadder.

Once the telephone lines were running again, people I knew called me to see if I was okay. Afraid that fear might have caused me to miscarry, they were relieved to hear that I was still pregnant and the baby was still kicking. Back then, I never felt afraid, in the sense that I do now. Then, I worried about where I would go if the house shook again, how I would be able to take the two cats and my pregnant self out of the building, how I would remember not to lock myself out of the house when I left. I believe now that in those days, I blocked out the fear that most people around me naturally felt. I guess I had a bigger fear; miscarrying this baby as well. Today, the fear of the earthquake, hidden well for months, has finally surfaced. It grew in small increments, crept up on me. Looking back I can now see that once my son was out of me, out in the world and separate from me that was when my fear arrived. There are times now, when a sudden panic takes over me, that I want to put my son back into the safety of my womb. Another task that is impossible, like sending relief, like finding people who are still alive under the rubble, like believing that the goods I send reach the right people and like believing it won't happen to me.

With two years in its wake, the earthquake has made me see how helpless I really am. It has shown me that the yellow light that shines just right on my side table, my table cloth perfectly ironed, my books lined neatly in the bookcase, my son sleeping soundly in his bed are all illusions of safety. The earthquake has shown me how little control I really have over my life. Unfortunately I have also seen how dependent I have become on the material things in life and how my perspective on what truly matters has become twisted.

Our son slept with us for a year after he was born, not because we believed strongly in the 'family bed' but because we needed to hear his breath as we slept. And we needed to know that the minute we shook, he was there to grab and pull to safety with us. A little over a year after the earthquake, we put him to sleep in his own bed, realizing how ridiculous it was to take a sleeping baby out of his own bed and bring him into ours in the middle of the night. We did this also because, we have to learn to live with what happened and learn to slowly become our old selves again, a task more difficult than being able to wear an old pair of jeans.

So now, as I go to bed each night I try not to listen too hard to the silence, for fear it may be broken. I try not to be too happy once the clock rolls past 3 am. I don't jump as often as I used to at the sound of the garbage truck rattling around in the early morning hours. And, I have stopped imagining how I would go crazy if the walls around us crumbled and I would stay alive to hear my baby cry in what used to be the other room, unable to hold him, smell him, soothe him.

2001

Creating Lives

DABBLINGS