On 6th February, an extreme earthquake hit Turkey. Yes, tragedies happen around the world regularly, yet somehow this one was different. It struck areas where I personally was there just a few months ago. Additionally, the society I live in has people who have connections to the area. So as much as I am far away from it all physically, it nevertheless had some impact on me personally, and I am not quite sure how to process it aside from being completely detached from it all.
As is probably evident by now, I don't have a habit of immediately publishing blog posts that give insights to my travels. Typically, I have a bit of a delay. After all, the point why I write about my travels is not because I want others to read it, but rather, I want to have an external memory so to speak: I cannot remember all of this in my head so I want to write it down. And when it comes to my month-long Turkish sabbatical, I didn't start publishing these blog posts until mid-February. When the earthquake happened, I first thought whether I should modify this practice. After all, it's slightly weird to write about positive experiences on locations that are more or less completely destroyed by the time my posts go public. But in the end, I didn't do anything, and just went ahead with the schedule.
So yeah, I had blog posts about places in southeastern Turkey such as Hatay and Gaziantep lined up, complete with pictures showing how they were like back in October, but when the posts go public, they're completely destroyed. Talk about temporal dissonance. Perhaps it's the result of my head trying to completely dissociate from the strong emotions that those who are affected definitely have.
When the earthquake struck, I of course just read it in the news. But the following weekend, I felt effects of it in the farmer's market that we typically go to. Our cheese stall is Turkish, our fruit and vegetable stall is Turkish, and it's just hard to continue business when you have extended relatives who are affected. These people who I have been seeing every week suddenly weren't their usual selves, which is understandable, but I was at a loss regarding what to say in return, when they tell everyone who asked how horrible it was for those who were affected. Inside my head, anything I say wouldn't really change things - dead people will still be dead.
We donated old clothes. People we know organised some help, and we chipped in. Nevertheless, there's a part of me that thinks that this was just my brain processing things. I still cannot rule out the hypothesis that this is an extremely sad event and somehow I don't feel anything. As if I took a large dose of novocaine and I'm completely numb and desensitised.
