evidence: Deren Ertas is a PhD candidate in history and middle eastern studies at Harvard. She was in Istanbul doing research when, beginning on February 6, 2023, a series of powerful earthquakes struck areas of southern and central Turkey and northern and western Syria. Following is a conversation with Ertas about her experiences in the aftermath of these devastating events. [...] As it is now well known, the earthquake affected a vast area, roughly 400 km, more than the distance between New York and Washington, DC. I cannot speak about everywhere affected by the earthquake since I remained in Malatya the whole time. Malatya, unlike Maraş and Hatay, was spared the worst. Nonetheless, there were more than 3,000 collapsed buildings, and the city’s infrastructure received a huge hit. When I first arrived, there was no clean running water, all grocery stores and shops were closed down, garbage collection had been interrupted, and the only people on the streets after a particular hour were police, gendarme, and village guards. Search and rescue teams had left and machines were trying to clear the collapsed buildings. Government officials started arriving in the second week after the earthquake to assess damages to buildings that were still standing. I remember on my second or third day in Malatya, one of the buildings that the inspectors had claimed only to be "slightly damaged" (meaning that people who live there could enter it) collapsed following an aftershock. Understandably, this contributed to an already-existing atmosphere of distrust and insecurity. Due to the continuing aftershocks, many people left the city.