Those rescued children, who emerged in their pajamas from the rubble of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria – Corriere.it

Children. Little creatures safe in the absurd interlocking of huge concrete blocks, small existences poised between a beam and a roof, little voices calling for help under piles of rubble. As soon as the terrifying roar of that monster silenced and the dust settled, the first watchword among the survivors was “children”. All repeating to each other to “look for the children” among the crumpled houses. And here they are, the little ones saved. There are so many of them and they were the only ones, yesterday, capable of eliciting a smile or tears of joy from those who saw them re-emerge from the collapsed buildings.

Earthquake in Turkey and Syria, all the news today live

The videos of the rescues have gone around the world. Hugs. Applause. Prayers. And they – the children – with that question mark printed on their faces as they looked around in that new world razed to the ground: what place have I ended up in? From social media, a little girl who will be two or three years old arrives on the world square of the web. Dressed in pink and white pajamas, she crawls forward, her little hands sinking into the dust and rubble. Somehow she comes out of a terrifying black hole and above her head is a huge concrete wall. She rushes towards the light of the flashlight and luckily she can’t think about what rescuers fear most in these situations: aftershocks. Even a small jolt would be enough and they would all be crushed.

In the event of an earthquake, the high-pitched crying of newborns is blessed which, like yesterday, has guided many successful searches. Silence punctuates the speeches. Shut everyone up: a voice is heard right under the feet of a rescue team. And after hours of work to open a very small passage, here she is: a little girl who will be about ten years old and who presents herself to her new life with a mountain of gray hair. Save. Silence again. This time it’s a kid calling. They find him completely buried – apart from the head – by pieces of wall crumbled in the collapse. He digs himself by hand, with caution. He moves one piece after another until the chest is free, then the waist, then the legs … The final applause releases the tension, the ambulance goes towards the nearest hospital.

And speaking of hospitals: at the Al-Razi Public Hospital in Aleppo, in Syria, doctors say that many of the children taken from the rubble and brought to them do not have their parents in tow. Same situation in Turkey where Twitter and Instagram broadcast videos of kids alone in front of collapsed buildings. In Syria, local media are publishing photographs of children arriving in hospitals without parents in an attempt to give them an identity (when they are very small) or to trace their families. From Gaziantep to Adana, from Aleppo to Kahramanmaras: now the enemy is no longer just the Earth which can start shaking again at any moment. There are also the frost and the passing of time. Every hour more is one less hope for the missing who are still in the thousands and, even if no one ventures numbers, it is not difficult to hypothesize that, among those missing, there are hundreds of children.

But the thousands of men who since dawn yesterday they dig and shovel with their breath freezing on their lips, looking for living men, women and children. They chase away the thought of death by thinking back to them, to the many little ones snatched from the rubble and held tightly until the hospital, to salvation. As if they were all children of all. The Syrian child who yesterday morning begged for help, imprisoned upside down between the wall and the roof of his house which collapsed on him, is the son of all. In the video posted on social media, the voice of an adult can be heard inviting him to recite the verses of a prayer while he goes to ask for help. And we like to imagine that—prayer or no prayer—help then arrived. May he, at least he, be safe in a tortured country that has been far from the word “salvation” for years.