‘I said I’d bury my son with his graddad’: Tales from Syria’s earthquake
Al Jazeera
Every morning, Ibrahim visits the graves of his nine family members who were killed in the earthquake last year.
Idlib, northwest Syria – At the top of a green hill separating the Syria-Turkey border from the small village of al-Allani in the northern countryside of Idlib, Ibrahim al-Aswad stands contemplating rubble that a year ago was a two-storey home.
“We were 15 people and only six of us survived,” Ibrahim still remembers the first seconds of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck – followed by a second, nearly as strong – southern Turkey and northwestern Syria at 4:17am on February 6, 2023.
He was woken up by the sound of his mother shouting from downstairs, telling him to leave the house. Confused, he felt around trying to find his thick glasses so he could see his way.
That delay was the reason he survived. He was unable to cross the threshold of his room before the house collapsed on everyone inside it.
“I lost my father, my mother, two of my brothers, my sister, her three children, and my daughter Ghazal,” Ibrahim told Al Jazeera.
