There is nothing wrong in Istanbul that cannot be fixed by a 7.5-magnitute earthquake.
And I feel an earthquake weather here today.
I woke up several times last night, checking if the chandelier was swinging or not.
Then I went out to the balcony, hoping to feel a breeze.
There was no breeze, as we were still drowning in the humidity of the hellfire summer.
Oh, how it was so different just a month ago.
There is still room to be optimistic, though.
As Amy Hempel writes in one of her stories:
What seems dangerous often is not—black snakes, for example, or clear-air turbulence. While things that just lie there, like this beach, are loaded with jeopardy. A yellow dust rising from the ground, the heat that ripens melons overnight—this is earthquake weather. You can sit here braiding the fringe on your towel and the sand will all of a sudden suck down like an hourglass. The air roars. In the cheap apartments on-shore, bathtubs fill themselves and gardens roll up and over like green waves. If nothing happens, the dust will drift and the heat deepen till fear turns to desire. Nerves like that are only bought off by catastrophe. "It never happens when you're thinking about it," she once observed. "Earthquake, earthquake, earthquake," she said.
As ordinary people, we can also try calling earthquake.
On the other hand, the authorities are expected be more serious about it.
And we know that they are not.
Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality has recently announced that it spent one billion dollars for preparations against the upcoming Big One.
Since the Izmit earthquake in 1999, the government had collected more than seventeen billion dollars by introducing additional taxes.
So sixteen billion dollars should be in the coffers of the AKP men now.
And while Muslims in Turkey are waiting for their ultimate fate like sheeps, the only Istanbulian that I've seen struggling to prepare the city for the earthquake by forcing city officials to be accountable is Claire Berlinski, the American journalist.
This is the real earthquake weather.
Can a 7.5-magnititude earthquake fix even this ill-omen of a sociopolitical disaster?
