Under the eucalyptus trees…

Under the eucalyptus trees…   Sevgul Uludag   caramel_cy@yahoo.com   Tel: 00 357 99 966518 00 90 542 853 8436   The weather is shifty: Cloudy, windy, sunny, very rarely just a few drops of rain… The wind reminds me of other winters when I was a child, when February and March would be cold and even in April, there would be lots of rain… Each year as we prepared for the Children's Day on the 23rd of April to go and dance at the festivities, we would get rain almost every time and we would have to postpone our dances to the following week… Those years have gone by and now we simply have shifty weather, not really knowing what to expect: Sunny or cloudy or windy? The weather has become like the mood in our country – not really knowing and not really seeing what might happen next… But we carry on and continue to do what we have been doing… It's been eleven years now, since I started writing about `missing persons` and the untold stories of Cyprus and seven years since I started running a `Hot Line` for my readers with my own personal mobiles… My readers call and can remain anonymous, giving me valuable information, tips, what they saw, what they heard and sometimes we would meet to go to a possible burial site that they know or heard of. In this way, we uncover the earth and dust over the hidden stories of our country – it's a difficult, tough task and needs a lot of patience but we are not going anywhere, we are here, on this island where things move slowly so I don't mind… On the contrary I am happy each time one of my readers calls and speaks to me – they take me to places I have never seen, tell me stories I have never heard, share a piece of the puzzle that we didn't know… They do the most humanitarian, most amazing thing by picking up the phone and dialling my number: In this way, they set on a path of no return… Because before they decide to call, they think about it and then decide – it takes some years for some of them before they decide to call so once they call, they are jumping a threshold with ease – they have already decided to help in this humanitarian search for information – that's why there is no going back. They have already crossed that threshold of keeping silent, keeping it to themselves and decided to share what they know. This is the most powerful part of my journalism because in this way, we manage to break walls of silence and as my readers talk, things become clearer, another piece of the missing puzzle fits in and in this way we create an understanding of what actually happened in the past. Last week one of my very dedicated readers calls me at night: Apparently he's together with a group from the area of Messaoria and has managed to convince another of my readers whom I don't know, to show me a possible burial site. I would call this person the following day to get the details… We speak the following day with this person and he tells me of a place in Pyrga (now called Pirhan). He had been a young boy of 17 in 1974 in this area and he heard some things, he saw some things and he says he's ready to show me, anytime I like, the possible burial site of some `missing persons` from the area. I arrange to go together with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to meet him and go together to Pyrga. On the 1st of March, 2013, Friday we set out from Nicosia together with Murat Soysal, Okan Oktay and Xenophon Kallis from the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to go and meet this reader of mine whom I never saw in my life. First we meet him and have coffee – coffee is the Cypriot way of getting to know each other and sharing our stories so we sit in his office while his dog sniffs us and wants to play… He suggests stopping around Ebicho (Abohor – Cihangir) in an old man's house to find out more details about the story and we go there first. Living alone in a house surrounded with a vast garden of six donums, the old man greets us. My reader wants to find out details of some names who had been in Pyrga in 1974. Then we drive to Pyrga, following the car of my reader. There is a group of eucalyptus trees in the middle of a huge field stretching for miles… Across is a military camp but where we want to go is under the eucalyptus trees. So we park our cars on a dirt track and walk among the green fields of barley, scattered with yellow patches, the colour of Cyprus in this time of the year: The green and yellow merges and we walk to reach the eucalyptus trees. From where we stand we can see Sinda to our south, in the north across the road must be Yenagra (now called Nergisli). It is sunny but at the same time windy today… In 1974, they had taken a group of Greek Cypriots here, under the eucalyptus trees… My reader was in the area but they would chase him and all the other civilians away, soldiers would tell them to go away… Some minutes later, my reader and other civilians with him heard shots. Apparently this was where that group of Greek Cypriots were executed and perhaps buried. When he had called me, he had told me that this was a group of 17 Greek Cypriots but after some investigation, he says that they might not have been 17 but 7. He gives us names of those who had been here and who know more about what happened. Okan Oktay writes down the names he gives and the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee will try to find these names to get more details about this possible burial site. My reader also tells us that some people from Sinda might also know some details of this story since they used to come to Pyrga back in 1974 until the soldiers chased everyone away and Pyrga became a military village. There is only a military camp in this village and there are no civilians settled in Pyrga. I will call my readers from Sinda to see what they know about this group of eucalyptus. We walk under the eucalyptus trees… Kallis says that years ago, someone must have planted these eucalyptus trees around his field… There are older ones and younger trees – perhaps the young trees grew on their own, no one planted them… Who had been in this field? Was it a group trying to escape war and go to the southern part of our island? Were they civilians? Were they soldiers? My reader remembers that this happened after the 14th of August 1974. When he first told me the story on the phone, he had said that they had separated women and children and had sent them to the south but among those killed here were some youngsters of 16-17 years old. I don't want to frighten him to silence so I let him tell me what he knows in the way he wants to tell. I don't want to force anyone to share what they know: I want them to share willingly because this is the more meaningful way of doing things. Only if people share what they know willingly, the truth will set us all free. We shall breathe more easily on this land; we will know what happened exactly and wipe off the dust covering our bloody past. We thank my reader for sharing what he knows and showing us this possible burial site. We will continue to investigate to find out what happened under these silent eucalyptus trees in the middle of vast, empty fields…   2.3.2013   Photo: The group of eucalyptus trees in Pyrga...   (*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 24th of March, 2013 Sunday.