Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
In the morning on the 10th of June 2017 Saturday, Philippos Karatsiolis comes with his car to pick me up from the Ledra Palace checkpoint to go to the funeral of a "missing" Greek Cypriot, Epifanios Kyriacou… Epifanios Kyriacou, a 20 year old young man had gone "missing" in a group of six Greek Cypriot soldiers from Kyra and one of my readers with a wonderful, humanitarian heart had helped us to show their burial site in Masari… My reader had been a seven year old child and right after 1974, he had been going through Masari on a donkey with his grandfather – his grandfather had seen the dead bodies while passing by and had stopped his donkey and got down and had told his grandson:
"Come… We cannot leave them like that… We need to bury them…"
And they had buried them…
This Turkish Cypriot boy would keep this as a secret and one day would call me to tell me about it and we would agree to go so he can show me and the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee this burial site… CMP would start digging and they would find the remains of the six Greek Cypriot "missing", among them Epifanios Kyriacou whose funeral we are going to…
I have a wreath with colourful flowers to lay near his coffin… They have all been buried and now is the last funeral from that group…
Philippos had been in that team because they were in the same unit of 281 with the group of six "missing" Greek Cypriots… He has written books about his village Tymbou as well as about his unit… He gives me his books now and we plan to meet again with a friend who agreed to translate for us since he speaks no English and I speak no Greek… I am grateful that he is taking me to the funeral at Agion Panton Church at Engomi…
Another reader had helped us to find the burial site of a group "missing" from Strongylos, among which was the "missing" grandfather of Epfanios Kyriacou…
In the church I meet the family of Epifanios: His brother Kyriacos and his sister Maria… Their father Spyros had passed away two years ago but his mother Eleni is here… She is so sad and so is Maria and everyone else… When I tell Mrs. Eleni who I am she gets excited and thanks me for going to the funeral… She starts telling me that in her village Vitsada, they were mixed and they lived together with Turkish Cypriots and she had a lot of good friends among them… Her daughter Maria helps us to communicate…
Epifanios is in a small coffin as the funeral continues…
I want to say to him, "Dear Epifanios, if you could lift your head up from your coffin, you would see so much love for you… Look at your mother, who waited for you all those years… When I met her now, she asked me to find you… Her daughter Maria told her that we did find you, that you are in that coffin… Perhaps it is better for her to be in this way – it will hurt her less although the damage is already done…
All those years dear Epifanios… All those young men and young women and all those old men and old women and all those children under the soil to be uncovered so they can return to their families for a decent burial…
You were killed with your friends and you lay down in the open plains of Masari together – a small boy of seven saw where you were buried because his grandfather, feeling sorry that your bodies were left out in the open took pity and buried you all… If you had a chance to know this boy you would become such good friends… He too is a refugee from a village in Cyprus where he cannot return and he is from a very poor family but what is wealth dear Epifanios? No one can take their wealth to the grave – so this young boy who has grown to a very decent person is a worker – he struggles to survive with his family on this land with human dignity… All those years he knew, he kept it locked inside him until he was encouraged by his mastro to call me and tell me… And he did and we went and he showed in January 2013… When the DNA analysis was final and your identities became clear, I would find your photos with the help of some Greek Cypriot friends and print them on my page in Yeniduzen… He would call me and tell me he felt good and he felt bad – because he remembered those days when they buried you…
This funeral is your final journey on this earth dear Epifanios… We all came to say goodbye to you after so many years… From the open plains of Masari, you came here to this church, in this small coffin…
I held the hand of your mother dear Epifanios and I saw her pain… I held the hand of your sister Maria and saw her pain… Everyone was so sad today in the church, we all cried for you dear Epifanios… We cried tears because you couldn't have a life of your own… Your life stopped at 20 years – you couldn't grow from a young man to a mature person, you couldn't get married, you couldn't have children, you couldn't eat and drink and work and worry about what will happen to all of us on this island where constantly there is uncertainty about the future of all of us…
We all worry dear Epifanios except a handful of people who run things in this country and outside this country from their posh offices… A handful of "powerful" people who send young men like you to die for their own articulate plans to divide and rule… They send young men like you to die in wars that they decide to start or to finish… They send you without any care, without losing any sleep over it – they draw and redraw maps, they move populations, they create misery and it is always people like us, the ordinary people who barely try to survive on this land, the poor, the desperate, the ones who try to survive… The ones who try to live with human dignity on this land… They steal our lives, our sons, our land, they steal because that is their nature dear Epifanios and we travel like a ship without a captain in rough seas all these years, all of us, being thrown this way and that way and meanwhile always losing, always having to start from scratch, always trying to raise our kids, get enough to eat, to educate them and with a hope for a better life…
The little boy who had seen you sprawled without life in the plains of Masari has children too now… He too worries about the future of this island… Maria, your sister has a daughter Eleni – she gave her the name of your mother… All your cousins are here, people from all the neighbouring villages like Lefkonico and Gouphes… They all cry for you dear Epifanios, they all came to say goodbye to you, a life taken too early, too violently, a life ended in too much of a rush…
I promise you dear Epifanios that we will continue to struggle for peace on this land so that the lives of young men like you are not stolen from us… We are still trying to collect the remains of all those Turkish Cypriots and all those Greek Cypriots killed in conflicts of 1963-1974 that are buried all over Cyprus in secret graves – we are still trying to collect the fossils of war when a bunch of "powerful" people inside and outside Cyprus are playing with fire again and are trying to create a new bloody conflict in Cyprus again… We haven't even finished collecting the remains from the last war in Cyprus and now they are planning to increase tension and again steal the lives of young people like you once again…
Those who know pain don't want any more conflict on this land dear Epifanios… Those who have lost don't want others to lose…
I promise you we will do everything possible to stop another conflict on this land so that we don't need to attend very sad funerals like this…
Rest in peace dear Epifanios, knowing that we will continue our struggle for a better life on this island…"
11.6.2017
Photo: The mother and sister of Epifanios Kyriacou at the funeral…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 18th of June 2017, Sunday.
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