Most hanging is the sense of abandonment — of numerous lives immediately interrupted — as survivors fled town with no matter they might carry, leaving passports within the drawer, household footage on the wall and laundry hanging on the road.

“Antakya bitti,” the lament goes. “Antakya is completed.”

The Turks say Kurtulus Road was the first in historical past to be illuminated at evening. It remained alive in any respect hours in fashionable instances, a purchasing space dotted with vintage shops, eating places and houses.

On one finish of the road is Habib-i Neccar, considered one of Anatolia’s oldest mosques, now in ruins. On the opposite finish is St. Pierre Church, already a whole bunch of years previous when Christian crusaders oversaw an enlargement within the early-Twelfth century. A stairway was broken within the quakes, however the stone face of the church was unhurt.

On the bottom outdoors a boutique resort whose rooms had been named after Hittite kings and Greek goddesses are remnants of earlier lives: photocopied notes on gland tumors, a battered jean jacket, a container of child meals.

All was eerily quiet till Mustafa Ugur burst out of a residential constructing holding a cardboard field.

“Have a look at this, it’s lovely,” he mentioned, pulling a pigeon from the field. “I got here right here to assist the previous uncle and take his pigeons someplace protected.”

Ugur regarded up on the roof the place an previous man, probably not an uncle however a good friend, stood trying down. The pigeon keeper fears his constructing should fall, the younger man defined.

“So we determined to evacuate the birds.”

Even the buildings that stay upright in Antakya are crisscrossed with cracks that snake by means of bedrooms and kitchens. Curtains sway within the breeze by means of damaged home windows and holes within the wall. Excessive-rises that seem unscathed stand ft away from others which have collapsed into hills of powder and twisted steel.

Typically, it was the fragile gadgets that survived. A set of sauces and vinegars tumbled out of a fridge. Expired Georgian passports and a set of frilly hair clips had been safely ensconced in a drawer. A lidless jar, nonetheless intact, spilled out a high quality inexperienced powder, a handwritten notice caught to it: “Nane,” Turkish for mint.

On some streets, troopers stood watch to stop looting. They huddled round makeshift fires, shivering within the chilly. The empty flats peered down at them.

Colourful garments had been strewn on avenue corners throughout town, lined in a movie of mud. They’d been donated to earthquake victims, however few residents had been left to assert them. Most people nonetheless right here had been from search and rescue groups.

Veli and Yesim Bagi had been the exception. Their sofa regarded misplaced, their clear, purposefully organized belongings sat starkly in opposition to the rubble. They waited on the lengthy, quiet street, their music retailer behind them, going through a once-pristine park.

“This place was very lovely,” mentioned Veli, a music teacher.

“The neighborhood was a brand new neighborhood, most buildings had been new. All the pieces was going to be excellent, all the pieces was alleged to be lovely.”

He gestured towards the light greenery throughout the best way. “Children used to play on this park. My college students’ mother and father used to have a break on this park after I was educating classes.”

He opened his piano and stroked the keys. “The fingerprints of my children are nonetheless on the ivories,” he mentioned, tears falling. “Now we can have new college students, we’ll educate different children.”

They too had been leaving town, to Adana, the place his mother and father had a home ready for them. However first, Veli mentioned, he was going to take his spouse on a vacation.