When the Weary World Shakes

It has never been this way, and it has always been this way.

We go to the fish shop that morning because new shipments of fresh fish always come on Mondays. I vacuum the bedroom floors and put new sheets on our beds because that’s what I always do on Mondays. But it all feels so dumb—a line from Mari Andrew’s poem bounces around in my head.

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Southern Turkey early Monday morning while everyone was home asleep in their beds. A few hours north, we wake to our bed shaking. I assume my husband is still dreaming when he bolts upright, announcing it’s an earthquake. I rub my eyes and tell him to go back to sleep. My sight is still adjusting to the dark when I hear the squeaking of the ceiling lamp above us, swaying unnaturally back and forth.

I join my husband, who is now at the window, the room still vibrating. Slow ribbons of smoke rise from chimneys like skinny ghosts in the gray light. But neighbors are clicking on their lights. Our landlords are moving about downstairs, talking to one another in loud voices. I hear the faint din of a news reporter on their television.

If it weren’t for the glowing windows in the homes next to us, all would seem normal, peaceful even. I shudder and curl myself into the blankets when the aftershock hits, less intense and shorter this time. I pray the earthquake, wherever it was, was small and the damage minimal.

It had snowed during the night, the first proper snowfall this season, coming exceptionally late in early February. Morning now, I bundle my daughter up in two layers of sweatpants in place of snow pants, and we join the neighbor kids outside. School is out today due to the heavy snow and also for the rest of the week for public mourning.

Frost clings to each bare branch, like the frost’s life depends on it, like it wouldn’t dare fall to the ground. The line of trees is all dusted in a powdery white, illuminated by the morning sun.

My daughter finds a broken-off branch taller than her and walks around like a queen with her scepter, the two pom poms on her hat bobbing and her winter boots slamming with each step across the cobblestone, sending a shimmer of frost before her.

Our landlord comes out of our building carrying a snow shovel and asks me if I felt the earthquake last night. He outstretches his arms and splays his palms, pantomiming the ground shaking. I take note of the Turkish word for earthquake, deprem, because I know I’ll be hearing it a lot more in the coming days. He playfully tosses a snowball to the neighbor kids and they throw one back to him.

The kids come up for hot chocolate, wet mittens and gloves in a pile by our door, cheeks red, noses sniffling. I heat milk over the stove and scroll through my phone. Real-time footage makes the rounds on Twitter. My heart sinks as I realize just how widespread the devastation is 180 miles south of us.*

At its epicenter, entire neighborhoods flatten within seconds. Videos pop up on my phone of rescue teams pulling people from the rubble. The earthquake had hit an area densely populated with refugees and internally displaced people—a vulnerable group that already shoulders so many layers of trauma. Someone shares a photo of a rescue worker holding the tiniest naked baby high above his head, the child born amid the rubble just hours before.   

Oh my God, I whisper, half prayer, half profanity.

My stomach churns as I digest what has happened so near to us. And then a kid in the living room asks for more pretzels. Another one launches into a winding story about their grandparents’ dog. My daughter starts singing The 12 Days of Christmas. I click off my phone, pour the hot chocolate into mugs, and join them.

After lunch, I’m home alone when the second earthquake hits. All the doors in the house rattle against the walls this time. I check on my daughter napping in her room and see her lamp swinging from the ceiling in that same eerie way.

Unsure what to do, I peek my head out of our front door and call out timidly down the stairwell to our landlord. His wife opens her door, and we both ask if we’re alright at the same time.

The news predicts a series of aftershocks to come in the night and to put together a to-go bag. I have no idea what to put in an earthquake to-go bag, but I shove in our coats, hats, and gloves. I add some diapers and fruit bars. I clear the doorway of any extra pairs of shoes. I wonder if I should pack a phone charger. Everything feels so surreal.

I’m tired of living in unprecedented times. (Anyone else?) So tired of that word, too: unprecedented. Extraordinary, unparalleled, unique. Can we go back to the precedented? Give me all the normal, the ordinary, the boring.

There’s no such thing, my husband whispers. I lay close to him at the foot of our daughter’s bed the following night. We arranged piles of blankets on the floor for us to sleep next to her. I just needed everyone to be within arm’s reach that night.

I lay next to him, my eyes occasionally wandering up to the ceiling lamp in her room, squinting in the dark to check that it remains still. I kept feeling phantom vibrations, like bouts of vertigo, all throughout the day.

Think about one hundred, three hundred, one thousand years ago, he says. Life has always been difficult.

I can’t argue with that. So instead, I whisper out, God, bring your peace. 

The next morning, I find my daughter dumping out toys from wooden baskets. I watch from her doorway as she positions each basket next to the other and carefully lays her dolls and animals in each one. She shushes me when I try to talk, saying that the babies are all sleeping. She’s acting out our family sleepover from the night before—“in case my bed shakes again”—and my heart breaks a little.

I had just finished scrolling through headlines when a haunting image of two little girls pops up. Two sisters, under piles of rubble, centimeters from death, were found alive seventeen hours after the earthquake. The older sister stares at the camera, her hand resting protectively on her little sister’s head. A massive cement slab lays on top of them.

The dolls and stuffed animals are now fast asleep in their respective baskets under the window. My daughter reaches her arms up to me and asks to be carried “like a tiny baby,” which, of course, for her was not that long ago.

I pick her up and sway her in both my arms, shushing and patting her behind. She laughs, her mouth open wide. She’s much too big to be held like this, something she doesn’t seem to comprehend or just doesn’t care about. But I like knowing that she likes returning to a time when she was small.

I hold her close. She looks up and asks me if I’m happy or sad or nervous (a word she just learned). Umm, a little of each of those things? Plus, like, five hundred more adjectives, I want to say. But at that moment, everything felt peaceful and okay­—in our little world, anyway.

Time didn’t stand still. The horrors of the world didn’t stop. The devastation of the earthquakes continues to grow. And life seems that much more fragile. But the quiet morning stretches a little longer with her in my arms.

Mari Andrew’s words echo again: “The fact that suffering, mundanity, and beauty coincide is unbearable and remarkable.”

I’m happy, I answer her, because I’m holding you. I’m always happy when I’m holding you.

—and because“it has never been this way, and it has always been this way.”

* 180 miles is about the same distance from Fargo, North Dakota to the Canadian border, for my Upper Midwestern friends. It sounds close but our city experienced minimal damage. We are safe.

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Ways to Help:

Ahbap Foundation: A Turkish NGO aiming to provide financial and social aid to those in need, increasing and strengthening cooperation in communities and societies.

Syrian Emergency Task Force: Every penny of this emergency campaign will supply essential needs, including water, tents, food, blankets, and medicine.

(Research any charities to which you plan on donating. Charitynavigator.com rates charities on transparency and accountability.)

Raise Awareness: Share the news far and wide. Doing so will increase the chances that this issue gets the attention of those in a position to support the relief effort financially.