“Happy Here”: Turkish Antique Cellar Halted After Earthquake

Antakya, Turkey:

From an old black cassette player, Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” plays through a damaged neighborhood of the ancient Turkish city of Antakya, where few residents have remained since a devastating earthquake nearly a month ago.

Almost all the shops in the city were closed and rows of buildings lay in heaps of rubble, but Mehmet Serkan Sincan, an antiques merchant who decided to stay, laid out his wares in the street and played music for passers-by – as he did before There was an earthquake.

A print of Salvador Dali’s famous melting clocks hangs prominently on the exterior wall of his damaged shop alongside a large mosque tapestry and another depicts Jesus leading a flock of sheep to water.

Nearby were a mosaic portrait of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, old magazines and several Turkish flags.

In a city where life has ground to a halt, Sincan, 50, who counted friends and neighbors among the more than 50,000 killed in the disaster, said performing as usual was a way of maintaining some semblance of normalcy.

“Even before the earthquake, these chairs were out there, I had stuff to show that we run an antique shop… It’s normal, classic life for us… So we’re back to normal ,” They said. “We’re happy here.”

In streets once packed with tourists, most of the passersby are now soldiers, police officers and other emergency workers.

Mr Sincan said the historic building at his store had been deemed safe by engineers, with damage limited to plasterwork and some non-load bearing walls.

But the thousands of antiques he had collected over the years were also damaged.

Inside the building, vases, teapots, saucers and other crockery were flung from their places in cabinets and multicolored glass and broken stone covered the floor amid silverware, a candlestick and pieces of broken wooden furniture .

Mr. Sincan walked around the store saving whatever he could: a portrait of his father, a caricatured image of Albert Einstein with his tongue out; A hazy copy of the Mona Lisa.

In one room, a wall collapsed over his Turkish antique glassware collection.

“I saved a little, the rest is down and I don’t think it’s all broken. Some more glasses will come out when we clean up here, God willing,” he said with a toothy grin.

‘We will rebuild’

The earthquake left many of the city’s historic buildings with a strong history of religious diversity in ruins – including ancient churches and many of the city’s old mosques.

The imams who used to call Muslims to prayer five times a day, Sinkan said, also left, prompting them to perform the pious act themselves.

He said, “I am not hearing the call to prayer. I have been praying for 20 years and this has hurt me.”

Several times a day, he ascends the stairs of his building to the courtyard above the street and calls the faithful to prayer in a loud voice.

He said, “It is a matter of honor for the Turks. We say that the flag does not go down and the adhan (call to prayer) does not stop.”

Mr. Sinkan said that a man who made his living from old things took a historical view of the devastation caused by the earthquake.

Antioch, formerly called Antioch, has been heavily damaged or destroyed many times by both earthquakes and conquests over the more than 2,000 years as it changed hands between the ancient Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Ottomans.

Sincan said he believed the city would rise again.

“Antakya has fallen six times, this was the 6.5th time. God willing, we will rebuild it for the 7th time.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)