February 15, 2023 02:03
When she felt the first tremors from the earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey last week, Umm Kanaan woke her three children and moved them to a small closet in her bedroom where they all found refuge, along with a collection of family photos and documents.
The earthquake flattened their apartment building in the coastal Syrian city of Jableh, killing almost all of their neighbors. The mother and her three children, whose apartment was on the fourth floor, survived with their precious bag of memories.
Um Kanaan and her little girl were tucked into a space in the closet no more than one meter wide, while her eldest daughter and third son were in a corner between the closet and her bed, using pillows to protect themselves when the building collapsed.
She said she was still shocked and wondered, “Is it possible that the building collapsed? Is this a dream?” Then she tried to move but could not. She said that a “divine power” made her leave this small space inside her closet empty.
Her husband survived, as he was not at home when the 7.8-magnitude quake struck, killing more than 5,000 people in Syria and 35,000 in Turkey.
The mother and her children were trapped under the rubble. They called for help from rescuers, who cleared the wreckage above them.
And she said, “They started trying to pull the roof off the closet, and thank God, the children came out fine, and I and the little girl came out fine,” adding that she kept holding the bag and took it out with her.
Their house turned into rubble and all their furniture and belongings were destroyed, so they headed to a relative’s house with a bag of memories, their last possessions.
Umm Kanaan said she felt uncomfortable in the hours leading up to the earthquake, so she prepared the bag the day before and filled it with family certificates, identity cards, and her marriage certificate, as well as photo albums and video clips of her wedding.
Fighting back tears as she flipped through an album of photos and pulled out her wedding album, she said she had been living in this house for about eight years and had never thought of storing things this way before.
Recalling the moment she emerged from the rubble with a bag, she said she felt “victorious”.
She added, “I really didn’t want more than that. These memories mean everything to me.”
Source: Reuters
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