Still not back
Part of the trip -
Cycle to china
Thoughts about the Van earthquake
“This is the news at 7.00 am on Monday, 24th of October. A violent earthquake has shaken Eastern Turkey. The earthquake believed to be 7.1 on the Richter scale was centred close to the city of Van…”
“Van!” An icy wave broke over my warm slumber and I bolted across the cold floorboards of our Edinburgh flat to turn up the radio.
Van. The name sent me back to the shores of a turquoise lake, sunshine gleaming off snow-capped peaks and radiating deep warmth through the thin spring air. We’d sat there, more than a year before, breakfasting with Hassan a truck driver who was driving milk from Iran. In a typical gesture of hospitality he had made us share his honeycomb, flat bread and hot tea and we’d talked about our families as we looked out to the gem island of Akdamar with its ancient Armenian church.
“54 have been confirmed dead with many hundreds missing…” I surfed the internet but there was little information. “…Many people have spent the night outside despite the bitter cold”.
We’d walked through the town at night, past young couples in pizza joints and families eating in steamed-up restaurants and watched our breath puff out in the cold dark air. A thermometer read -15◦C . We’d bought sticky deep-fried tatli on the street and, later, slurped steaming bowls of lentil and mint soup in a packed diner. During the daytime we’d sat wrapped up in the square, where men played backgammon, and drank strong tea from the seller who plied his trade in the park, balancing the tulip glasses on a metal tray.
“A hotel in the centre of town collapsed”. On the 10th November, I sat in my overheated office checking the news of the aftershock. I remembered dragging our bags up five storeys of a narrow building, past men praying on mats on the landing. Was this rubble the same hotel? My thoughts flew again to a family near the town of Ercis at the epicentre. They’d invited us to camp in their garden as we’d journeyed towards the Iranian border. A huddle of 12 curious faces had peered at us, as we sat cross-legged in their house eating dinner. “50,000 people have been made homeless…” I hoped our donations would be being put to good use, feeling powerless and guilty.
In the week before Christmas I hurried home through the streets of Edinburgh, with the wind whipping icy sleet under my chin and up the sleeves of my coat. Cold fingers fumbled with keys in the lock, and then two button-clicks fired up the boiler and radio.
“The temperature in Scotland is set to drop below minus five tonight for much of the country….” I shut my eyes as my hands felt the radiator gradually warm. 5,000 km further east, it was already midnight, well below zero, and the snow might be falling thick and deep on the mountain-fringed shores of a dark lake.
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