Searching for `missing` on the hills of Agia Marina…

Searching for `missing` on the hills of Agia Marina…   Sevgul Uludag   caramel_cy@yahoo.com   Tel: 00 357 99 966518 00 90 542 853 8436   On the 5th of February 2013, Tuesday morning, together with my reader who had shown us some possible burial sites in Masari, we go to Agia Marina so that he can yet show us another place where as a child of seven, he had seen some human remains… Some bodies were lying in a deep crack among the rocks – he had gone there with his grandfather in 1975 and had counted at least three skulls but his grandfather would take him away before he could investigate more… He will show us this place on the mountain… But first we stop to see the excavations at Masari in the possible burial site that he had shown. Already on that day they had found the remains of two `missing` persons and this is just the beginning of the exhumation process… In the following days, this number becomes three and would increase as the excavations progress… By the time this article is published in POLITIS the remains of six "missing" persons are found in the place where my reader has shown to us in Masari. Archaeologists are excavating carefully, with a lot of care since the remains of the `missing` are buried on the surface… Demet Karshili, full of life and energy is the team leader – she has a bad cold, she should definitely be in bed but she is here… Chinar Karal is six months pregnant but continues to dig… There is also Giannis and Chrisanti who are excavating – it's very cold and windy but our archaeologists are digging under any circumstances – unless there is heavy rain when they have to stop… In Masari (Shahinler as it is called now) we go to have coffee with the mother and father of my reader. My reader's mother, while looking for a house to stay back in 1974 and passing through Kira (now called Mevlevi) had seen the hand of a woman in a heap of soil, next to the outside walls of a sun brick house. The hand was beautiful, with red nail polish; it was the hand of a young woman… When she saw the hand, she had said, `No! We can't stay in this village!` and they had left Kira, to come to Masari and settle here with their animals. `If I go, probably I can't find that house but it's as though it was in the centre of the village…` she says. We thank her for the coffee and start to go to Agia Marina. From the main road of Morphou-Nicosia, at some point we turn to the left and find a dirt track climbing the mountain. It's a very bad road… With us are the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, Murat Soysal, Xenophon Kallis and Okan Oktay, my reader and myself and two Turkish Cypriot investigators from the Committee. We climb up to the top of the hill… The whole area belonged to the Cypriot Maronites and Agia Marina was one of their most important villages but now it's a military village. We look down at the village from where we are… The Maronites call this hill `Aspro Kremmos` which means `The White Hill` and further up is the `Kochino Kremmos`, `The Red Hill`. We stop on the `Aspro Kremmos` where there is an abandoned building with no doors or windows… This had been a tavern, a night club once, the owner having made a lot of investments in it. It had been called the `Skylap` and people from Nicosia would come all the way to Agia Marina to listen to live Greek music and dance. From my Maronite friends, I will find out that `Skylap` belonged to a Maronite policeman called Frango and from time to time, the villagers would also have weddings here. We can see the ugly scars of war on the walls of this building: Lots of bullet holes – clearly it was bombed by planes in 1974, later on becoming a military post but now completely abandoned. There is no one here and all we can hear is the sound of the strong wind that wants to blow us away from this hill top if we are not careful! My reader finds the crack among the rocky surface and shows it to us – Murat Soysal and Kallis find a way quickly to get in the crack to check… A bit further up, there is another crack and my reader calls us to show this as well. The excavation team of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had had excavations not far from here but they had found nothing – information about these cracks are new to them so they would investigate… `I was only seven but as I remember, it can be this or the other crack` he says. `I had counted at least three skulls… The bones were still intact, they had not disintegrated but my grandfather got upset that I saw this and took me away…` His grandfather had a herd of goats, around 200-300 and would keep them in a cave in this mountain, particularly when they were giving birth. He would collect and burn `tulumbe`, a kind of wild sage growing on these mountains, in order to keep the goats warm. `We would stay there, in the cave as the goats gave birth…` He misses those days… When his grandfather died, they had sold the goats and the only things that remain from those days are some very old bells, 150 years old, that they used to hang around the necks of the goats… `I keep those old bells; I know exactly which goats carried those bells` he says. My reader still tries to be with nature a lot: He likes hunting and fishing and goes out to the sea to catch swordfish and orkinos with his friends… On top of the hill, not far from the `Skylap` tavern we find hundreds of broken plates – these plates had belonged to `Skylap` and you can still see the lovely motifs on them: Red roses, bluebells, yellow wheat… The nature around us does not care what has been broken: Bright tulips and yellow lapsana flowers tell us that soon, springtime will begin… A shepherd passes by with his sheep and this beauty and this quietness brings peace to our souls, despite what has happened in this scarred land… One of my friends from Agia Marina had told me that their village had come under heavy fire from Turkish war planes on the 14th of August, 1974 – there had been a lot of Greek Cypriot soldiers around the village, those fleeing the war… Since people from Agia Marina knew the area well, they had gone to the caves in the Kochino Kremmos (The Red Hill) and had hidden there. No one from Agia Marina was killed or injured or `missing`… `But those young soldiers` she would tell me, `who did not know the area stood no chance…` Perhaps the remains that my reader has seen belongs to those soldiers who could not escape and were killed in the war… From the `Skylap` there is a small asphalt road and we take that road to go down another way and we stop at the Prophiti Ilias Monastery on our way – again, no doors, no windows and it's such a beautiful building… A Turkish Cypriot reader from Agia Marina had told me that this monastery was built in the 1940s, it was a new monastery – down below we can see the old one, again called Prophiti Ilias – the most sacred place for Maronites… The new monastery was bombed during the war and burned down… There is no one around except a young donkey tied to a tree – perhaps a shepherd tied her here and left… The asphalt road ends in front of the new monastery and becomes a dirt track – we drive through that road to see if we can get back to the main road. We pass a mandra and after the mandra, we get stuck in the mud – both Murat Soysal and Okan Oktay desperately try to get the car out of the swamp it's stuck in: They bring pieces of wood from the mandra and collect stones from the area to put under the tyres but nothing happens… For three hours this goes on… Finally, they call one of the bulldozer operators of the committee and he comes with a truck, loaded with a bulldozer – he would tie the car with a chain and pull it to get us out of the swamp. There is no way we can climb back the road we came from since the tyres are full of sticky mud – the clay soil has stuck in the cavities of the tyres… Both Murat Soysal and Okan are soaked with mud… The bulldozer operator, Mustafa Tahsin, tells us that further up there are two worse swamps but not to worry, he will pull the car with a chain on those spots – and this, he does… No matter what, we would have been stuck we realize… The investigators go back the way we came, taking my reader with them… But soon we meet them in the office, thanking my reader for showing us yet another possible burial site: We have had a misfortune of getting stuck in a swamp but still we are happy since he managed to show us a possible burial site that no one knew about…   10.2.2013   Photo: View from Agia Marina   (*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 3rd of March, 2013