bTV special envoys visited the intensive care unit of the largest hospital in Adana. For 105 hours, or almost 5 days, Jem Okur and his daughter Tanem have been huddled under the wreckage of their home. Their house in Antakya collapsed in the first tremor in the early hours of Monday.
“We woke up from the tremor, it was still dark,” said Tanem Okur.
“The building started to fall. We were not reaching the exit. I sat on the couch and hugged her tightly. That saved us. The wardrobe fell on the couch, and the entire ceiling on top of it. A cavity formed, it was our refuge. It was about a meter by a meter,” Jem Okur said.
It’s not hard to see how strong the bond is between this father and his eight-year-old daughter. “Tanem was very, very scared,” Jem said.
“My mother was in the other room, I knew she was not alive. I was desperate as a son, I was desperate as a father, but I didn’t show it because of her,” he added.
“But you cried when we left,” Tanem said.
“I was pretending to be a strong person, but as soon as I saw the rescuers, I cried, the tears just flowed,” noted Jem.
In the largest hospital in the Mediterranean region, the one in Adana, stories like that of Cem and Tanem are thousands.
And the doctors have not left the medical facility since the first minutes after the earthquake, including the director.
“This is a pandemic for us. A pandemic of traumatism, but the survivors… they are the ones who motivate us endlessly,” said Süleyman Cetinkonar – director of the City Hospital in Adana.
Back in the hospital room, memory after memory pops up.
Jem Okur: My house is gone.
Tanem Okur: Dad, all the houses are gone!
Jem: I mean, I was willing to trade three more houses, if I had them, for a single bottle of water. That’s what Tanem wanted all along.
While waiting for rescuers, they played word games and imagined beautiful places they would be. And they sang a song – about father and daughter:
„Tell me a story, father, let my childhood be in it.
Tell me a story father, let my sunshine be in it“.
