Brilliant white net curtains

A picture in a newspaper of a partially ruined appartment block, a young man sitting in front of it on the ground, against a lamppost. The picture accompanies an article about the earthquake that hit the Marmara region (to be more precise: southeast of Istanbul) today exactly nine years ago. Archive picture? No, sadly enough it’s not an archive picture. The article is about how difficult it is to rebuild  the most severly affected villages and towns, where at the time – according to official figures – more then 17 thousand people lost their lives. Even now thousands of people are still living in prefabricated houses and many still people live with friends or family. Financial aid is not always used well, rebuilding and renovating are carried out so slowly, that in recent years, thousands of people decided to leave the region once and for all – circumstances are too difficult, the memories too intense. But not everybody can leave. Some people even have to live in houses that are at the point of falling apart. The picture shows evidence of this: when I look at it again more closely, I can see brilliant white net curtains hanging in some windows…