Monday, May 5, 2014

In a tiny refugee house…

In a tiny refugee house…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

In a tiny refugee house at Agios Athanasios in Limassol, flowers are blooming… In a tiny refugee house, we sit in the tiny garden on the front porch, created by Maro – myself, my husband, my best friend Christina, Maro and her husband Demetrios Santis…
In a tiny refugee house, Maro has created both in the front and the backyard a heaven with flowers – flowers I remember from my childhood, red flowers, white flowers, flowers of fuchsia colour… Flowers tell you the story of what sort of dreams Maro must have when she puts her head on her pillow at night… Flowers tell you of the story of how so much love for plants can only bring you happiness and kindness from this couple… They show how human they are and no matter where you throw people as refugees that they will continue to dream of the place they were born in…
Living in a tiny refugee house, walls covered with photographs from the past, they too have survived amongst so many other refugees…
Christina, my friend from Komi Kepir remembers them well but had never spoken to them before until I asked her to… They live in the street behind her mother's house… Christina used to walk every morning on this street to catch the bus to school and she used to see them but had never spoken to them…
We travel from Nicosia to Limassol to go together with Christina to visit Demetrios and Maro, my readers… Demetrios had been calling me and sending me messages for many years but I never had a chance to visit him – it took me around five years to come to this tiny refugee house to meet and have coffee with him and his wife Maro…
When I sit on the front porch among the flowers, I feel at home here and I want to show as many Turkish Cypriots as possible this refugee area, Agios Athanasios… In general Turkish Cypriots have chosen not to see what sort of suffering the Greek Cypriots have gone through – through propaganda by the regime in the northern part of the island, Turkish Cypriots have been led to believe that the `Greek Cypriots lost nothing` - when checkpoints opened back in 2003 and Turkish Cypriots crossed to the southern part of the island, all they would `see` would be the richness and the glitter… Many times, I would talk about these refugee houses and the lives of Greek Cypriot refugees to Turkish Cypriot friends in order to dismantle this `illusion` about Greek Cypriots… Here again, sitting on the porch I feel embarrassed even though it is not my personal fault that Demetrios and Maro were forced to become refugees… Even though the Turkish Cypriots were
forced on many occasions to become refugees in their own land in 1963 and then in 1974, the propaganda has not really allowed them to empathize with Greek Cypriots in similar situations… There are always exceptions to the rule and I am talking in general terms…
I learn from Demetrios Santis that his mother Maria Kasapgeorgi had been from Trimiti Kyrenia and during the times of great drought in Cyprus her father had emigrated to Turkey to work and they had settled in Tasucu, once upon a time known as Kilindriya… There her father had met her mother Eleni from Alaya (now called Alanya) and had married there… When Maria Kasapgeorgi was 14 they were forced to come back to Cyprus back in 1922 due to `population exchange agreement` among Turkey and Greece.
The father of Demetrios was a teacher from Akanthou, Michalis Santis.
The mother of Maro Anna Andoni is also from Akanthou, her father Andonis Kikas from Paralimni…
`You can't forget the place where you were born` says Demetrios…
`I remember Akanthou, the cinema, the church… But because my father was a teacher, we moved all over Cyprus… Every two years we had to load everything on a car and move elsewhere… My father wanted me to be a teacher but I said no because of this reason! Moving every two years from place to place, packing all your things and loading on a car every two years? No thank you! Instead I studied economics in London…`
After the checkpoints opened in 2003, he would go back to see Akanthou and would want to visit the church, the biggest of the area but they would find the church locked and they would not be allowed to enter…
But Demetrios and Maro were not living in Akanthou, they were living in Varosha… They had a two storey house among 30 skala of orange groves… Not one or two donums, 30 skalas! The reason why Maro created a lovely garden on both front and back porches of this tiny refugee house is clear now: She is cherishing the smell of those trees, the 30 skalas of orange and tangerine groves that disappeared…
`The smell from the trees when they blossomed!` says Maro…
`We went back and we were shocked to find not even a single tree! All the trees had been cut! Not a single one! There was a Turkish Cypriot from Larnaka who was living in our house and she closed the door and did not allow us to go in! We went through the back because I wanted to show my daughter her room – she could not remember how the room looked – there were stairs at the back but these too had been destroyed… Sometime later, we went back again, this time another Turkish Cypriot was living in the house and she was nice and opened the door and let us in… They had changed everything about the house, new doors, new kitchen… There was nothing left from what we had in that house…`
She shows me the photos of her house in Varosha… But photo or not, it is engraved in her heart and she will always cherish it the way it had been, not as it is now…
And Demetrios says he wants very much to go and see Tasucu where her mother's family had a house on a hill… Tasucu is right across Kyrenia, only 40 miles away and there are ferryboats from Kyrenia going to Tasucu… Demetrios thinks it only takes an hour to get there but we tell him that it takes about four or five hours by ferryboat…
`When there is a solution, I want to go there together` he says… His mother's family had a house up on the hill close to the port of Tasucu…
`One can never forget or stop loving the place where he or she was born` he says cherishing Akanthou and Famagusta Varosha because both places are in his heart, as well as Tasucu where his mother came from…
`We will go, of course` my husband tells him… `We will go together…`
One of my friends, Leyla Kiralp, recently in an interview with RIK said `It is clear that our communities are much more progressive than the politicians… Politicians lag behind…`
Here on this porch her words are reflected – what is it that they don't want us to share on this island? The smell of the orange groves, the lemon trees, the tangerine? The smell of jasmine? The sun? The sea? The hills of Ayia Marina from where you can see the Bay of Morphou? The breeze of the sea on the balcony of my friend Christina in her house in Limassol? The beauties of Dora? What is it that they do not want us to share?
Here in this tiny refugee house, we share everything – our memories, our pain, our joys of seeing children grow, our dreams… Maro got me a present, a small bag to put toiletries but I will put my tape recorder and tapes and my diary in this bag to continue to collect and share memories of Cypriots from all walks of life who might speak Greek or Turkish, Cypriots who were forced to become refugees but never lost the love to the place they were born in, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots and Armenian or Maronite Cypriots who have stories and dreams to share… I will take the bag with me wherever I go and it will tie me to this tiny refugee house, wherever I go… In this tiny refugee house, there is 30 skalas of orange groves, smell of jasmine and orange and tangerine blossoms, dreams of Akanthou and Varosha… In this tiny refugee house, there is peace and understanding and respect for each other… What other formula would you need for peace on
this island?

12.4.2014

Photo: In a tiny refugee house together with Demetrios and Maro...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 4th of May 2014, Sunday.

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