Gaziantep Part 1: Landing

In between thoughts of pity over my exhaustive journey and excitement in planning a field trip, we start our descent into Gaziantep, Turkey. Turkish Airlines is all about their in-flight map. They have it on about 23 different 3D perspectives as the plane flies across the sky, far more than any other in-flight map I have ever seen. As we grow closer, the regional map starts to populate with interesting cities: Baghdad, Bahrain. But closer to Gaziantep, nothing. Is it a sleight of hand by Turkish to omit the dark places nearby? Then about 15 minutes out, Aleppo shows up on the map and indeed quite close to Antep (about 90km to be exact). Yegaads. Clearly the crew is thinking the same thing, because in the next second, the proud map display disappears, prematurely and well before landing.

Too late. My vigorous imagination of a place I’ve never been to, in a provocative location on the edge of a war zone, combined with my ever-present landing anxiety, kicks into gear and begins to fuel a number of speculations. I start praying that ack acks or RPGs will not be spotted suddenly hurdling toward us in the crystal clear night sky. Seriously. Seriously.

What I will find here in Gaziantep is most likely a people torn apart by conflict, but determined to improve their lives and somehow find peace. I will find that my fears, while ever present and at times justified and/or histrionic, will be eclipsed by other priorities, such as capturing the right picture of the people here to carry back home with me. It reminds me of Congo and of course of northern Uganda. These are places dear to me that have terrified me at times for both real and imagined reasons, but also places where the plight of those on the frontlines dominates my memory and more importantly my efforts to articulate requests for action to the powers-that-be. Here I already know that the message will be to support women and girls and men and boys to settle Syria and bring peace at last.

Broad strokes at this stage - the rest to be shortly filled in.