Local Turkish barber fears for family

As he lay in bed in the early hours of Monday morning, Mustafa Onge was woken by the buzzing of his phone. It was his familly, who, thousands of miles away, in the city of Sanliurfa, Turkey, had been disturbed from their sleep by much more violent vibrations.

“There has been an earthquake,” read that first, gut-sinking text. “The earth is still shaking. Buildings are falling. But we are okay.”

Official reports claim that over 11,000 have been confirmed dead as a result of the earthquake, and the World Health Organisation has predicted that those numbers will increase dramatically in the coming weeks.

After reading those texts, Mustafa, a barber in Omagh, did not close his eyes for the rest of the night, and he has had little opportunity to catch up those missed hours of sleep since.

Because, while, for most of us, the carnage created by the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria earlier this week only rush into our reality when we turn on the news, for Mustafa, the death and devastation has never left his mind.

“My parents, my brother, my sister, my cousins, all my friends and family are back home in Turkey,” he told the UH when we spoke with him on Tueday afternoon.

Mustafa, who is the owner of Authentic Turkish Barbers on Market Street, has been in Omagh for six years. Before that he spent six years in Belfast.

But, in the 12 years he has lived away from his homeland, Mustafa said he has never felt more separate from his friends and family than he does now.

“Nothing like this has happened since I have been away from home. It is awful. When I found out, I cried in my bed.”

Mustafa has been contacting his family every half hour, making sure that they are still safe, checking if they have heard news of their friends, trying, desperately, despite his physical distance, to stay as close to them as he can.

“I cannot stop texting. I cannot stop watching the news. It is all I think about. Every moment I have spare, I am praying for my family, praying for the children, praying for Turkey,” said Mustafa.

The first overture of the catastrophe came as a tremble in the cold and dark of Monday morning, arriving like an intruder in the night, as the people of southern Turkey and Syria slept.

It was was minus ten degrees outside when pictures began falling, lamps started smashing, and the walls commenced to shake.

“My family are in one of the cities that has been worst affected,” said Mustafa. “It is called Sanliurfa.”

Images emerging from the area where Mustafa’s family live show the hellscape summoned by the 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude tremors.

Videos show bloody-handed civilians desperately pulling bricks from mountains of rubble, searching frantically for missing loved ones they fear buried beneath the mounds of rock.

“It is a broken city,” said Mustafa, “the sort you might expect to see after months of bloody war. But what has happened to my country was not brought on by the actions of evil people. There have been no bombs, no shady political conspiracy. This destruction was wreaked in a series of terrible instants.”

Now, Mustafa, along with his family and the rest of those who live in the affected region, live in terror that another earthquake is imminent.

“My family are sleeping in the car, only returning to the house to go to the toilet and to get essential items,” said Mustafa. “The government had declared a three month state of emergency, and there is an earthquake alert is still in place. My family are not allowed to travel,” he said.

Mustafa then spoke of the feeling of powerlessness that has come over him since he first heard the news. An overwhelming desire to help, but no means of doing so.

“I keep telling my family that I can send money if they need it. I do not have a lot, but Turkey is quite a poor country, and food shortages are expected soon.

“Things are going to get bad. I want to help however I can. But, at the moment, it does not feel like I can do a lot, other than hope and pray for them,” said Mustafa.