When Sara Ozen dreamt of her university graduation day, she imagined happiness, cheering and laughter. The 22-year-old tells Charlie Hawes how it became the day she buried her father
The call came in the small hours, as Sara Ozen, 22, slept in her London hotel room.
Her father, Behcet Ozen, 56, should have been 30,000 feet in the air on his way to attend her master’s graduation at Leicester’s De Montfort University, but a fatal chain of events had taken over the course of both their lives.
Drowsy, Sara turned off her phone and returned to sleep.
Anticipating her upcoming graduation day, the thought of being reunited with her beloved father was filling Sara’s dreams.
Believing he would have landed in England by the time she woke up, her whole life seemed to be going perfectly to plan.
But on the other side of the continent her family was facing a battle for survival after being struck by a deadly natural disaster.
Sara, an architect from Hatay province, Türkiye, had just missed the phone call that would turn her life upside down.
“For months my father and I had been excited for the thirteenth of February, the date of my graduation, but until the day I die I will remember it as the worst chapter of my existence,” says Sara.
On February 6, 2023, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southern Türkiye, close to the northern border of Syria.
Nine hours later, disaster struck again: a second quake, almost as strong.
Sara’s home of Hatayhamamı, a southern province on the Mediterranean coast, was at the epicentre of the most devastating earthquake to hit Türkiye in more than 20 years.
“There was no reason for him to be at home in Hatay,” she says, inhaling sharply before casting her mind back to that painful time.
“He should have been on a plane, or even at the airport in Istanbul where the earthquake did not reach.”
However, a tragic twist of fate had ensured Behcet was at the epicentre of danger.
“He drove to Hatay Airport for a connecting flight to Istanbul on the fifth, but his car broke down and he missed his flight.
“Instead of spending the night at the airport for the next the flight, he decided to return home.”
It was a decision which ultimately sealed his fate.
The earthquake struck at 4am, 1am GMT, Sara was in a London hotel, safe.
She’d lost her father.
“I was asleep at the hotel when the earthquake struck,” she says.
“I work up at around 10am and the moment I laid eyes on my phone screen and saw the missed call, dread took over. I knew in my bones that something catastrophic had happened to my father.
Sara called her father immediately, but the call did not connect. She managed to get hold of her aunt who told her that her father, uncle and other aunt were gone, under the building.
“The building, our family home was on top of them,” she says.
For Sara panic consumed her, followed by confusion and distress.
“I remember screaming down the phone to my aunt who was also panicking, ‘he should be here, in London, or on a plane,’” she says, “’don’t let him be at home, anywhere but home’.
“I was waiting, in shock.
“Nothing else, I couldn’t move, feel, talk I was paralysed. This was my father, I love my father a lot, we have always had a special relationship.
“I called my mum, I screamed, ‘where is my dad? where is my dad?’ and she was screaming back, in tears.”
Then, the waiting began as there was nothing Sara could do.
She had no choice but to wait in England for four days while her family on the other side of the continent tried to save her father’s life.
“They couldn’t find my dad in time,” she says, “my dad had six brothers and five sisters, a huge family so with seven of them they had lots of people trying to get them out.
“Afad, the government search soldiers, didn’t arrive for three days.
“The traffic was jammed, the roads were damaged, and it meant that everybody was searching for their own families and many people who didn’t have help were not getting rescued.”
During those 48 hours, Sara’s aunt and uncle were dug out from the rubble.
They had survived.
Sara tried every second to call her family, but the earthquake had destroyed much of the infrastructure.
Sara was in the dark from her family as she counted the hours until her flight.
“When I finally arrived in Türkiye, people I knew started texting me saying sorry for your loss. At this time I didn’t know anything, and I was still in shock, so I rang them screaming ‘what are you talking about, they haven’t found him yet’.”
In that moment Sara knew. “I had lost him”, she says.
“When I arrived home I was told by my aunt that my father had died. I didn’t cry, I didn’t do anything, I could not move.
“Imagine those end-of-the-world movies, with destruction, buildings on the ground and the dust, it was the worst thing I had ever seen.
When a loved one dies, some find closure by seeing them for a final time.
For Sara, the pain would have been too much.
“My uncle asked me if I wanted to see him. I couldn’t have done it,” she says, “I would have shattered into countless pieces.”
After two days of grieving, Sara’s graduation day had finally arrived.
February 13, the day she thought would be one of the happiest days of her life, became the day she buried her father.
Instead of celebrating, she was standing above her father’s grave, praying an ezim, a call for missing people, 2,500 miles away from the graduation ceremony.
“He was my best friend,” she says, “I could share everything with him, and he would always support me.
“It was my biggest fear to lose one of my parents ever since I was a child, and I will always love him.”
As the first anniversary of her father’s death approaches, Sara prepares to return to London for her new job and to re-start her life.
“Sometimes, I daydream about the day I should have graduated,” she says, “with my father cheering me one in the crowd, but that was not meant to be.
“My graduation day was with my father, in the graveyard.”
