I feel the double bed rocking while I’m half asleep. Outside there is a terrible storm with strong wind, rain and hail lashing against the windows. The room is lit up by deafening thunder. I think it’s the strong wind that makes things in the bedroom shake. But the rocking gets stronger and stronger. I wake up suddenly, jump out of bed and shout at my wife. – Shara! There’s an earthquake! – What? She says startled. The earthquake left parts of Turkey and Syria in ruins. Here from Kahramanmaraş in Turkey. Photo: OZAN KOSE / AFP She runs over to me. We hold hands, while trying to sum ourselves up. It is a little past 0300 at night. It all feels like a nightmare. I look up at the ceiling to look for cracks. Shara stares at the large family photos we have framed above the headboard to see if they are hanging safely. – Look! The whole room shakes, I say. We look at each other in shock. Shara runs into the children’s room to look for our youngest girl, Lydia. She has to lean on the walls on her way away. I look at elder Laurina, who has again snuck into our bed during the night. Full panic – She’s sleeping, shouts Shara from the next room. – So does Laurina, I reply, and praise myself happily that the girls have such good sleeping hearts this night. Then they don’t have to see mum and dad in full panic mode. My family at the Christmas market in Beirut. From left Shara, Laurina and Lydia – What are we going to do, asks Shara? We have to get out! – We can’t wake the girls and go down 17 floors now, I say. – Let’s go to the little doe, it’s the safest place without windows, suggests Shara. We take the girls in our arms and rock our way to the guest bed. On our way out into the hallway, we see the other doors in the apartment, which we usually close at night, open and slam again uncontrollably due to the strong swaying of the building. The heart rate is sky high. The eyes and senses are sharpened. We feel lost along the walls of the doe in the darkened apartment. The shaking lasts for just over a minute, but feels like an eternity. The thought of our 34-storey apartment building shaking so violently that we can barely stand upright scares the life out of us. We live in the block of flats on the left. During the earthquake, the huge building swayed from side to side. Then, suddenly the shaking gives way. We are still in shock, but manage to get out of the toilet. All the doors are wide open. Paralyzed by the tremor We put the girls between us in our bed, and hold tightly around them. We can’t sleep. Shara extends her hand over the girls. – Look, I’m trembling. While we lie there, time stands still. We do not understand what we have just experienced. Normally, I would quickly update myself by throwing myself at my mobile phone. But now I was out. I just lay there and kissed Laurina tenderly on the forehead. Shara googles herself until there has been a strong earthquake in Turkey. – Turkey, I think. It is hundreds of kilometers away. – Imagine the kind of destruction the earthquake has caused there when we in Beirut experienced it so dramatically, says Shara. As we lie safely in bed, our thoughts go to all those living closer to the epicenter, and what a nightmare they must be going through. LOST EVERYTHING: Turkish children grab a bite to eat after losing their home. here from the earthquake-stricken city of Kahramanmaraş. Photo: OZAN KOSE / AFP We, on the other hand, were lucky. Very lucky. While hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes in Turkey and Syria, or were buried under the concrete masses, we escaped the horror. Norwegian passport and ticket out We woke up on Monday morning as usual at 0630. We pretended that nothing had happened to the children. Laurina was delivered to school. But in the Whatsapp group with the other parents, we saw that almost everyone had kept the children at home. The Lebanese were in shock. We thought it might be good that we didn’t break up Laurina’s everyday routine. A few hours later the school called. They were going to close immediately and asked us to pick her up right away. A tsunami warning had been issued because of the strong earthquake. The school, located right on Beirut’s famous promenade towards the Mediterranean, would not take any chances in case the sea washed over the capital. Then we considered whether we should get out of Lebanon. Go home to safe Norway. Just to be on the safe side. Take the children away from all the uncertainty. As Norwegian citizens, we have that opportunity no matter what kind of chaotic situation we find ourselves in. Just take the first flight, and save ourselves and our loved ones out. I have experienced that several times. When the Taliban took Kabul, Afghans desperately clung to military aircraft on the runway to get out. KASO: It was this crowd that I was dragged out of by Norwegian soldiers. This is what it looked like right outside Kabul’s military airport. Photo: Yama Wolasmal Then I stood among thousands of Afghans outside one of the gates of the military airport in Kabul. Whoever escaped through those gates was guaranteed a place out of chaotic Afghanistan. Self-loathing creeps in. I was among the chosen. Again I was among the lucky few. I was rescued by Norwegian soldiers. They dragged me out of the crowd, and dragged me into the base. All the Afghans stood back. A few days later, I and other Norwegians were evacuated aboard the same type of military aircraft in which Afghans had fallen to their deaths from a few days earlier. I was a Norwegian citizen, after all. After all, I had to be rescued from my birthplace, which imploded before our eyes. I’m not saying this because I’m fond of self-flagellation. But I won’t lie. It eats me up inside. The feeling of injustice feels like a hammer in the stomach. Why should I be among the lucky ones? What really is the difference between me and everyone else around me? That I have a Norwegian passport? That feeling has been further reinforced in the past week because I have been working closely with earthquake victims in places like Idlib province in Syria. Earthquake victims in Idlib in Syria. Photo: AA/ABACA / Abaca About 4 million people live there. Half internally displaced persons. Refugees in their own country. Those who have survived war, barrel bombs and terrorist groups such as IS for more than 11 years. In Idlib, they lack food, water, fuel, medicine and shelter. That was the situation there before one of the worst natural disasters in the Middle East in almost 100 years hit them. They have nowhere to escape. No place is safe. They live under the open sky now, and hope for a piece of bread and a sip of water during the day. The boy from Idlib I can’t get the images of little Hammoudi out of my head. A local hospital in Syria sent me videos of how he was rescued. The seven-year-old was buried under concrete and twisted metal for three days. In the video, you can see that the rescuers struggle to get the boy out of the ruins, while he writhes in pain. The reason: he is stuck in the arms of his dead dad. The tiny boy must be torn from the once safe, but now stiff and lifeless arms of the father who probably held his son around to protect him. Stuffed animals in the ruins of Syria. Photo: Juma Mohammad / Zuma Press Every time I catch sight of Hammoudi, I have hugged my girls hard and long – and praised myself happily. As Norwegians, we are almost always guaranteed a ticket out of countries affected by natural disasters, war, conflict, political chaos or social upheaval. Either we get out on our own, or we are picked up by the Norwegian authorities. It shows how unashamedly lucky we are in a world that is largely characterized by natural disasters, unrest, chaos and conflict. Shara put it into words: – It’s as if we win the world’s most unfair lottery, every single time.
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Middle East correspondent Yama Wolasmal reflects on the earthquake in Turkey and Syria – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
