n + 1 magazine | 05/01/2023
Prelude
Istanbul has the world’s largest airport, but our corner of it is as hushed as a hospital waiting room. There are no X-ray screeners, no rowed seating or gates, no last calls. Only an expensive-looking clock that makes our heads turn. Every tick seems to mark another passing, sorting the living from the dead.
Some sixty rescue volunteers from across Istanbul, we have gathered here, the second morning after two earthquakes sheared a 185-mile gash from the lower gut of Turkey into the western tip of Syria. We will fly, a team leader says as they hand me a blank boarding pass, to the epicenter of the first quake (Maraş), from where we will drive to the epicenter of the second (Gaziantep), to join our co-volunteers in Islahiye, a town about halfway down the gash and deep into its scab. Our task is to help free people from their homes and to do it fast. Some of them are presently trying to free themselves.
The national disaster management agency has blocked off a commercial plane for us. An air-bound dolmuş collective taxi van that dashes off as soon as the seats fill up. But there aren’t enough of us. I see a handful of paramedics and rescue workers; other than that, the last ones to board are all plain-clothed question marks. Some, I learn later, have come to manage the disaster agency’s English-language social media accounts. Others are medical and engineering students who will learn on the job. Me and a Ghanaian are the only two foreigners on the team.
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Naomi Cohen | journalist 