His name is Atsushi, last name human

I have embedded this name in a place in my mind: Atsushi Miyazaki. Not only in a place in my mind but also in my heart. In a selected place, I have erected it like a monument. I have written this on it: “A non-unknown world hero.”

Coming with a background of the unfortunate earthquake history of Japan, knowing very well the pain, the sorrow over there, coming, rushing here to Anatolia with the knowledge that a geography that can turn into a wreckage in a moment; and fate comes and fetches you there… Your destiny transfers into eternity there.

You also write this name down: Dr. Atsushi Miyazaki. He is Japanese. He is a man of the world.

Please, you also write down this name at a much selected place, at the best selected place in your heart. Do write it down, because if one day a global humanism will dominate this world – if such humanity grows to become the character of the entire world – it will happen by the virtue of these people thanks to those like Dr. Atsushi Miyazaki.

We will achieve it thanks to those souls who feel the pain of the people out there, out at a very far distance, in their own chests like their own pain. We will explore the promised humanity oasis in those journeys we will set out with such people. With these feelings we will gather and piece together one by one the human puzzle shattered by arms, ideologies, beliefs and interests.

Who is he? Where is he from? Where was he born? What did he study? Does he have a mother, father, brother, sister, a girlfriend, a wife? What did he feel when he heard the news of the earthquake from a far, far land? What prompted him to pack his equipment and belongings in a backpack and rush from one continent to the other? What is the chemistry of this extraordinary humanist hurry?

I researched yesterday. Unfortunately, in a world separated by alphabets and languages, I did not come across any trace of his life. I strove to find a distinct thing to write on the monument I erected at my heart. Because I could not decode Japanese, I was not able to find much.

For today, there is only his name. He was 41 years old. He was born in the Oita Prefecture of Japan. He studied medicine. He first worked at an aid organization that provided jobs for women. He was at the aid of the civil society at the Philippines.

Dr. Atsushi Miyazaki...

He is Japanese, from the land of Mishima, from the country of the samurais.

He comes from a noble and separate culture, from a nation that does not lose its graciousness even in grief. But I want to know him more closely, I want to be related to him, I want to learn his life.

I want to lay the chrysanthemums he loves on the grave of this person who will lie eternally under the mausoleum I erected for him in my heart.

Have you noticed that an alliance of pain is being formed in the whole world? A misery chain, hand in hand, is being set up beginning from one end of the world reaching out to the other. In every link, there is a hand and there is a soul of a person from every population.

There, I trust this new person. My source of hope is those people who dare thousands of kilometers with their backpacks. The 21st century will be constituted by these people without borders. Despot administrations will be pulled down by these Japanese, Turks, Arabs, Brits, Americans and Russians.

The human spring in my heart has started its historic march from under this rubble at Van Square. My doctor brother, I salute you with respect. I am sending you the tweet of a Turk, of Murat Aşkın: “Rest in peace Miyazaki San...”

We will never forget you and Miyuki Konnai, who was rescued alive from under the rubble.

Ertuğrul Özkök is a columnist of daily Hürriyet in which this piece appeared Nov. 11. It was translated into English by the Daily News staff.