She misplaced her husband within the Turkey earthquakes. She does not find out about her son.

In Syria, they had been sweethearts. As refugees in Turkey, they constructed a life away from hazard. Hassan, 37, was the breadwinner, Najwa, 27, was the homemaker. It all fell aside within the darkness of Feb. 6, because the earth appeared to roar and the partitions and roof got here tumbling down on high of them. Najwa remembers waking as much as discover Hassan’s physique wrapped round her. In loss of life, he had saved her and their youngest youngster, Majid, nonetheless asleep in her arms.

Curled beneath a fleece blanket Friday, her eyes darkish from fatigue, Najwa was at a loss. “It’s been five days,” she mentioned, her voice cracking. “It’s hard to believe it.”

Monday’s earthquakes have killed 28,000 folks, a quantity nearly unimaginable to grasp. As the fast shock fades, the dimensions of the human tragedy is barely beginning to come into sight. No one is aware of what number of our bodies the rubble nonetheless holds. And many survivors don’t know the entire fact about what they’ve misplaced.

As Najwa mourns her husband, her household hasn’t had the center to inform her about her center son, 10-year-old Mohamed.

When the earth began shaking of their mountain city of Islahiye, her eldest son, 12-year-old Mounir, jumped from a window and sprinted by the streets to unfold the information to Najwa’s father and brothers, who rushed to the scene. But within the darkness, and with out rescue automobiles, her kinfolk had been powerless to elevate the cinder blocks from what remained of the bed room. As day broke, they noticed Hassan’s physique crushed subsequent to Najwa; once they managed to achieve her hand by a gap within the rubble, she was inconsolable.

“She was sure that she wouldn’t make it. She was hysterical, she kept crying out that Hassan and her sons were dead,” recalled her cousin, Mustafa Sheikh. “She wanted us to leave her there. She wanted the stones to bury her too.”

It took hours for the rescue automobiles to reach. Knowing they needed to maintain Najwa aware, her kinfolk sat along with her in shifts, rubbing her hand and attempting to distract her — with jokes, with tales of Syria, with speak of the meals they’d prepare dinner collectively when she bought out of there.

Sometimes she’d snigger weakly, different occasions she grew agitated. She requested time and again for her kids. But then a voice interrupted them, someplace deeper within the rubble. It was Mohamed, and he was telling them his again damage.

The extensiveness of the destruction meant there was not sufficient excavation tools to go round. In each Turkey and Syria, folks have died when crude tools dislodged concrete and rubble on survivors. Without correct instruments, it took hours to rescue Najwa first, after which Mohamed.

Najwa’s leg was badly wounded, and he or she was rushed to the hospital. Mohamed got here out smiling. “We think he must have been in shock,” mentioned his uncle, Mustafa Ibish. “You couldn’t tell then that anything was wrong.”

It quickly turned clear there was one thing unsuitable with the kid, however they didn’t need to fear Najwa. Though she had been within the hospital for days, no nurse or physician had taken the time to scrub Hassan’s blood from her hair. She requested her brother, Omar, to chop it off for her. Her anxiousness was rising as her broken leg started to show black. Omar took Mohamed to the hospital with out telling her, and he was handed from physician to physician earlier than the household bought a analysis: it was kidney failure.

By Friday, he was on life help. Doctors say he has extreme mind injury and they don’t anticipate him to get well. From her hospital mattress, Najwa asks for him typically, however nobody has instructed her. No one is aware of how.

It is a dilemma going through numerous households in communities throughout southern Turkey and northern Syria, as kinfolk attempt to defend grieving family members from additional ache.

In the Syrian city of Jinderis, The Washington Post interviewed two fathers who had misplaced sons beneath the rubble. Both had been nonetheless in search of the phrases to inform their daughters.

In Islahiye, Najwa’s different two sons haven’t seen their mom since she left for the hospital, 55 miles away in Gaziantep. When Mounir requested kinfolk the place his father is, they instructed him that he was on a enterprise journey. Now the boy is quiet and has stopped asking.

“We’re just trying to surround them with relatives all the time, we’re trying to treat them like little kings, but it’s not easy,” Mustafa mentioned. With their properties broken, the household resides collectively beneath a tarpaulin. They have pleaded with Turkish authorities for a easy tent, however are nonetheless ready.

Few others have obtained one of their largely Syrian neighborhood. “They don’t give them to people like us,” mentioned one man.

By Saturday, there was no replace on Najwa or Mohamed’s situation. With the partitions of their home lacking, the bed room the place Hassan saved Najwa is uncovered among the many ruins. So is a brown and orange blanket that Mohamed was clutching when he first cried out from the rubble, once they all thought he had been saved.

Haifa Ibrahim contributed to this report.