The Last Phone Call from the Rubble

In October 2023, rescue workers in Hatay, Turkey — still clearing wreckage from the February earthquake — recovered a cell phone from beneath a collapsed apartment building. Its call log showed something remarkable. In the final minutes before the building pancaked, the phone's owner, a thirty-four-year-old teacher named Elif, had not called emergency services. She had called her mother. The conversation lasted ninety-one seconds.…