Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
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I sit in the garden at early hours of the morning to enjoy the coolness – soon it will be too hot to sit outside so I would have to move in… My heart -comrade is watering the flowers in pots and the trees and cats are jumping and playing as the turtles in the pond come out to see what's going on… We have a beautiful cat now, yellow – almost a pinky white – whom we tried to save from going blind… We managed to save part of his eye sight and now he is in the garden, playing with other cats, all grey…
Wood pigeons haven't come this year so we can sit by the pond – they are such shy birds that you can't be near them if they want to come down to drink water from the pond… Last year, we could never sit by the pond but this year they are nowhere in sight – I see lots of pigeons but they too are shy to come down – the only birds that come are the doves and sparrows…
Dates on the tree are green but slowly they will become ripe… The pecan nut tree is green and nuts and dates will soon attract the crows… We will wake up to their laughter and all birds will feed on the dates…
This Sunday I am home, last Saturday I was at Agios Athanasios for the funeral of `missing` Philipos Pantazis, brother of Vasilis – the remains of Philipos were found in Synchari…
As the remains of Philipos Pantazis were being taken inside the church, his sister Anthoulla cried out loud, `Oh! My brother!` and started crying and all of us started crying and could not stop throughout the funeral… It was such a cry from the heart, the sorrow, the loss, the love she had for him that it touched everyone's hearts… I had gone to the funeral with my husband and my dear friend Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia whose father and brother are `missing` from Komi Kepir… She too would cry throughout the funeral and I would decide from now on, not to ask her to go with me because these funerals would really tear her heart apart…
This funeral was different because Vasilis did not invite any politicians on purpose and he would make a very critical speech about how politicians had been using the pain of the relatives of `missing persons`… Vasilis said in summary:
`With reverence and modesty we came to this sacred place to honour a hero and to express, simply and humanely, feelings of appreciation and gratitude for the sacrifice of the life of Philipos Pantazis on the altar of freedom of our country.
Philipos was not known. He became known with his sacrifice and heroism. He was a young man, simple, anonymous, a fiery young man with visions and ideals.
Facing his great love for his country he did not count his life so he went into Immortality. He left as a hero, and now from up there he is urging us all to walk the path of honour and duty, which he drew.
We feel very proud of you, our brother.
No, Philipos did not die. He lives and will always live in the history of this land. He lives and will always live in the blue skies of Cyprus.
Our beloved brother,
The gratitude of all of us belongs to you. Your honour and glory is recognized. You will live in our memories and in our life, eternal, pure, heroic, wonderful son and brother.
But there will always be a big question to us all: Why did all these had to happen? Why did no one deal with those who were lost for so many years?
The dead have the laurels, the missing have the wheres and whys on the bitter lips of their loved ones, the wounded and the prisoners the scars and the wounds…
All those who passed alive amongst molten iron and bullets, that heard painful whistling by taking the mortars, without ever bravo, are not looking for praise of poets, nor monuments at the entrances of military camps. They do not look for money, or medals, or favours from the absent state. The only thing they asked for, somewhere between the lines which were not written, the stories which were not said, is the truth. So that the coming generations will know it. So that it is a sign for tomorrow, those that will follow to avoid new betrayals, and the whys, the whys which are haunting their restless evenings in the fever of the nightmare and the wounds in the soul. The wounds which do not count as wounds of war. The whys, the unanswered whys of the tragedy.
The game of war is difficult. The uprooting of refugees bitter and heavy. Death even more bitter and heavy. But most bitter and heavy is the ignorance about the father, son, brother, your loved one.
I see all which they did not manage to live... We called them missing, while we knew that they are heroes. And we continue to forget it and live our lives indifferently, while each week we bury the remains of the bones of these heroes. Murdered by the Turks in 1974, we "murder" them also today with the now usual indifference of the Cypriot society and the Cypriot state.
We leave alone the elderly parents, if they did not leave with the grief, the siblings in front of a small box, which is too small to fit their sacrifice. We leave them alone in an almost empty church to attend in silence, accompanied by the unprecedented pain, the honours which a bankrupt state formally delivers, to listen to the wooden and meaningless language of the political obituaries and not words that heroes deserve…`
On the 23rd of August Saturday I will go to the funeral in Larnaka of another `missing person` one of my readers helped to find – we had gone to Lysi and had shown the place to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and when they exhumed, they found the remains of this Greek Cypriot `missing` person… And on Friday this week on the 15th of August, there will be the funeral of 34 `missing` Turkish Cypriots from Tochni – 32 of them from the first bus taken from Tochni to Palodia and killed and later buried in Gerasa and two of them `missing` from 1963-64 from Tochni – killed and buried in a well in Strovolos, Parisinos area… 34 funerals all at the same time in a special cemetery built for them and a museum where the remainder of their clothes will be exhibited… The funeral will be in Vouno and I cannot even conceptualize what sort of pain there will be on the outskirts of the Pentataktilos while the Turkish Cypriot relatives
would bury their `missing` in this new cemetery.
And on the 7th of September, I will go to another funeral in Aradippou, to bury the remains of the brother of Takis… We had gone twice to show to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, his possible burial site close to the Saint Hilarion, on the mountains – Agios Pavlos Lapithou area… Finally they had exhumed the place we had shown and they found the remains of Giorgos Ttooulou, the brother of Takis… Giorgos was doing his military service and was about to finish on the 14th of September 1974… Then the war came and on the 20th of July 1974, on this spot we had come to at Agios Pavlos Lapithou he was killed as Turkish planes opened fire and a branch of a carob tree had hit his throat… One of his friends who was the son of a papaz had prayed and they had buried him where he had been killed.
Takis had never stopped searching for his brother and he had come at Agios Pavlos Lapithou many times to find the exact spot where he had been buried… And it was due to the efforts of Takis that the remains of his brother have been found…
40 years after his brother will come back to Aradippou, in a small coffin to be buried where he had been born… And I will go to lay flowers next to his coffin on the 7th of September in Aradippou…
A few weeks ago I went to see Takis and his wife in their home in Aradippou. His wife Eleni had cooked katimeri for me – everywhere were pictures of Giorgos… They had a lovely house and in the yard, another house, the house that had belonged to their mother… Their mother Theophania had waited for the return of Giorgos until the day she died in 1992, three years after her husband Stavros' death in 1989.
So the hot, painful, sorrowful summer continues but today is Sunday and I must rest in my garden, look at the trees, the flowers, the turtles, the cats and take some pleasure from life in order to get ready for more funerals coming up in the following weeks and months…
10.8.2014
Photo: The small coffin of Philippos Pantazis...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 24th of August, 2014 – Sunday.
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