I was in Istanbul during the earthquake. Because I was deeply asleep during the earthquake, I didn’t feel anything. However, when my Mum woke me up in panic, I realised something must have happened. My Mum and Dad rang their relatives, took a torch and a radio and we went outside.

The first thing that struck me when we went outside was that there seemed to be more stars in the sky than normal. The whole neighbourhood was outside. The street was very crowded. After a short time the electricity went off. The light of the stars lit up the street, if only a little. One of our neighbours in our block went down to the seashore. The shore is very close to our house anyway. Until the sun came up in the morning we sat and listened to the radio. About six in the morning we went home and I slept until noon. 

After that we really began to taste the bitterness of the earthquake as the news came in. Adapazari, Izmit and Golcuk were really bad. As if those places had been wiped off the map. After that, the news that several of our relatives had died made us feel even worse. Of course the earthquake didn’t end with this. We had lots of aftershocks, one after another. We lived in the park for a week. After that we accepted that we had to return home. And so we have lived through two months full of the fear of the earthquake. And even now there are still motherless, fatherless, homeless people on the streets. Everyone is trying to help them, but it is not enough. We feel very lucky that we didn’t lose our house.