A City Between Heat and Hope
Hatay, Türkiye
2025, Senior, Creative Writing
The days in Hatay no longer feel ordinary. It’s like the balance of nature has been broken, and we’re left watching it crumble around us. Every morning, I wake up to a sun that burns a little harsher, and air that feels heavier than it should. The heat is no longer just uncomfortable—it’s suffocating. There are times when it feels like the sky is pressing down on the city, and no matter how many windows we open, there’s no breath of relief.
Summers used to be bright, filled with the smell of lemon trees and the sound of kids playing in the streets. Now, the streets are quieter. Children stay inside because the concrete gets too hot to walk on. Some days, it feels like the heat is alive, crawling up your back, sticking to your skin. Even at night, there’s no escape. The air doesn’t cool down anymore. Fans and AC units run endlessly, but even electricity has started to falter—blackouts happen more often, especially on the hottest days.
Then there are the winters. Once, we waited for winter like a calm visitor. Now, it barges in with freezing winds and rains that flood the streets. I remember a week where it rained so much, the container we were living in started to leak. My mother tried to cover the ceiling with plastic bags and old clothes, but the water kept finding ways to drip in. The floor was damp for days.
And the sea… oh, the sea.
It was once the heart of İskenderun. We used to walk by the harbor, eat sunflower seeds while watching the sunset, and collect seashells with our cousins. But now, every time I go down to the coast, it looks like something’s gone terribly wrong. Jellyfish cover the shorelines like a strange blanket. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, lying lifeless and glowing under the sun. The first time I saw them, I thought it was just a strange event. But it kept happening, again and again.
Old fishermen say they’ve never seen anything like it. The fish are disappearing, the waters warming, the currents changing. They cast their nets, only to pull up jellyfish, plastic, and disappointment. My uncle, who lived his whole life by the sea, says it’s like the sea is warning us. Like it’s crying for help.
And maybe he’s right.
You start to see it everywhere—the signs. Leaves falling out of season, insects appearing in months they shouldn’t, sudden dust storms that cover everything in a reddish film. I once came back home from school and couldn’t see the mountains behind our house. They were hidden behind thick smog and dust, as if nature was trying to disappear.
Of course, the earthquake is the wound that split everything open.
It was early February, and we were all asleep when the shaking began. At first, I thought it was a bad dream. But then the windows rattled, the cupboard crashed, and my mother screamed for us to run. We made it outside just in time. I’ll never forget the sound of buildings falling—deep, thunderous, almost in slow motion. And then the silence. That awful silence that follows destruction, where everyone’s too scared to speak.
We lost our home. Like many others, we were forced to leave. We moved to Ankara for a while, trying to continue our education, to feel something close to normal. But normal didn’t exist anymore. My friends were scattered across different cities. Some families never reunited.
Eventually, during the LGS period, we returned to Hatay. It didn’t feel like coming home. The city had changed. Empty lots stood where buildings once rose. Shops were closed, schools cracked, playgrounds deserted. We lived in a container—a small metal box placed in a temporary neighborhood filled with others like us. The walls were thin, and the noise never stopped. Crying babies, murmuring adults, the distant sound of construction—everything blended into a song of survival.
People tried to smile. They shared food, offered tea, told stories. But behind every laugh, there was a shadow. Grief, fear, exhaustion. I remember one night, an elderly woman told us how she lost her two sons in the quake. She had nowhere else to go. Yet, she still offered me half of her orange.
And through all this, the pollution worsened. Official reports even confirmed it—Hatay had become the most polluted city in Turkey. The earthquake had stirred everything: asbestos from broken walls, chemicals from fallen factories, smoke from fires that burned for days. You could taste the air. It left a bitter feeling in your throat. Coughs became common. People wore masks out of necessity.
Even now, two years later, many still live in those containers. Children have grown up in them, knowing nothing else. Some families tried to rebuild, but the costs are high, and the fear is still there. What if it happens again?
And through all this, the climate continues to rage. Every season feels wrong. Nature no longer follows rules. Rain floods us one week, drought burns us the next. It’s as if the earth is confused, or maybe tired of us.
But still, we go on. Because we have to.
We go to school, even if it’s in temporary buildings. We sit through the heat, the cold, the power cuts. We help each other. We carry each other’s pain quietly. We still find moments to smile—when the power comes back, when the sea breeze is kind, when a baby laughs. Life, despite everything, keeps moving.
But I want the world to know: climate change is not something far away. It’s not just news. It’s here. In our homes, our lungs, our seas, our food. It’s personal.
I am not a scientist. I’m just a student from Hatay. But I’ve seen what it looks like when the balance of nature breaks. And I want to believe we can still fix it—before it’s too late.
Reflection
Reflection
I didn’t write this because I am a professional writer. I wrote it because I needed to—because the pain I felt was too heavy to keep inside. Where I come from, in Hatay, nature was once a source of comfort and life. It was something we could trust, something that gave us hope every day. But now, it feels like the earth itself is wounded. The summers are unbearably hot, the sea no longer offers peace but strange, lifeless jellyfish washed ashore. The rains that once nourished the land now flood our streets, destroying what little we have left. And after the earthquake shattered our lives, even the air became hard to breathe, filled with dust and fear. I remember the first night we spent in the container homes—the thin walls barely blocking the sounds of people crying in pain and loss. I remember my mother trying to fix leaks with old clothes, hoping to hold back the cold and the rain. I remember the silence after the earthquake, the kind of silence that stays with you, even in your dreams. This piece is made from those memories—real moments from days that felt like the world was ending. But it’s also a message—a cry for help. A reminder that climate change is not just something far away in the future. It’s the heat burning our skin, the cracked earth beneath our feet, the dying sea at our doorstep. I’m not a scientist. I’m just a young person who misses the world as it once was. But if my story can make even one person stop, feel, and want to help, then maybe it means something. Maybe, just maybe, we can still change the ending.