From Eftagomi to Kridhia…
Sevgul Uludag
Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436
Daylight would be giving way to dusk, the early evening hours of one summer day… The heat turning to a cooler evening breeze… They would be travelling on a bike, the two friends from Eftagomi (Yedikonuk as it is called by Turkish Cypriots of the village) to Galatia village nearby in Karpaz. As soon as they would get out of the village riding towards Galatia, the one riding the bike would stop.
`I want to show you something` he would say to his friend.
`What is it?`
`Look to your right… See the cavity and the heap of soil there…`
`Yes…`
`That is where three Greek Cypriots are buried… One of them was the mukhtar of the village…`
The young boy, riding behind the bike would look and see the cavity and the heap of soil…
When he would hear about the mukhtar, he would feel very sad… Because his grandfather had been a close friend of the mukhtar and when one day, the mukhtar was speaking to the young boy and had found out who his grandfather was, he would insist on sending him stuff, gifts from Eftagomi to his old friend… The kindness and the hospitality of Cypriots of old days…
The young boy would never forget: Neither the possible burial site shown to him by his friend, nor the kindness of the mukhtar he had come to know briefly, the friend of his grandfather…
Many years later, he would find me on Facebook and would tell me about this place… He had been reading my stories about the `missing persons` and he too would want to contribute with his information in this humanitarian cause.
I would ask him to show this place to me and to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee.
`Many years have passed but let's go and try to find this place` he would say to me…
So one day last August, we would go, me and my reader from Eftagomi, the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, Murat Soysal, Okan Oktay and Xenophon Kallis…
We would drive through Galatia, through the road where the lake is, pass from the village and go towards Eftagomi…
Many of my readers, at different times had told me that just outside Galatia, driving towards Eftagomi, a group of Greek Cypriots had been killed and buried them somewhere around here… Some had shown a `boridja` - there has been excavations in this area where the said `boridja` was with no results. Some readers would say that they had information about the rubbish damp on this road, that people had been executed and buried there…
Now we go on the same road with my reader – he wants us to go to Eftagomi and then return towards Galatia to try to remember where they had stopped. We do that and he gets out of the car – he is very anxious and trying to remember where they might have stopped on that summer evening… He walks up and down and finally points out a spot…
`I cannot say for certain an exact spot but it must have been in this area` he says…
While Kallis explores the area, Murat Soysal asks him questions in order to refresh his memory, to see whether there was any mark that he would remember… The archaeologists digging in the area for the `missing` also arrive and we also show them the possible burial site of some `missing` Greek Cypriots…
`If his remains are found` my reader tells me, `I would very much like to go to his funeral… He was a good friend of my grandfather…`
We take photographs and coordinates… Kallis, exploring the area for difference in the level of the soil and for cavities, calls out to us to point out a spot which is a bit hollow… We walk up the road and down to check with my reader whether he is pointing out the right area…
`No, we did not go that far…` he says going back to the area that he had pointed out and says, `it must be somewhere here…`
Then we drive to the village Kridhia – I want to take the group and offer them a light lunch at `Garavolli`, an authentic restaurant of this area. I call the restaurant on our way to prepare for us fresh boghrulce beans (fresh black-eyed beans) and kabak (courgette)…
Kridhia is a village from my childhood, the village where my aunt Pembe had got married, where I would spend my summer holidays, going on a donkey outside the village with my aunt's family to collect carobs, to eat patticha (karpuz) with hallumi and bread that my aunt's daughter Havva had cooked in the fourno (oven) in the yard of the house. Coming from Nicosia, I would watch in amazement how Havva Abla would prepare the dough, how she would shape them into bread, how she would make peksimet with sugar and sesame, how she would build a fire in the traditional Cypriot oven in the yard and how she would cook them… I would play with Yusuf, a child about my age, in the yard of the mosque, collecting the sticky gums from the almond trees, putting them in a glass jar to melt in order to use as glue later… Yusuf, my childhood friend from Kridhia would be killed in 1974 and I would remember him each time I would visit the village…
In Kridhia of my childhood I would sleep at night in the yard, in a bed under the stars, covered with a traditional quilt since it would be chilly at night… I would look at the stars and fall asleep, only to wake up to the kukurikous of the cocks in the garden… Havva Abla would go to take the eggs from the henhouse and I would follow her, amazed at everything I saw since I only knew of life in a town as a 6-7 years old child… The donkey, the dogs of the house, the cats, the chicken and the rooster, the wheat they would put in a room, the carobs, everything would amaze me… We would visit a neighbour whose daughters would put tobacco leaves on strings and hang them from the floor and I would smell the tobacco leaves and look at them, mesmerized…
Everything would be fresh, home cooked, prepared by my aunt and her daughter… Havva Abla would name one of her children after my father, calling him Niyazi – my aunt Pembe and my father Niyazi had been very close and we would often visit Kridhia or my aunt Pembe would come to Nicosia by bus to stay with us…
We go to this village, to the small restaurant called `Garavolli`, to eat real Cypriot food and my reader is touched when he sees kappari in vinegar…
`This is how my aunt used to make them` he says…
The restaurant also offers baklava made with carob syrup, something I had never had anywhere else before… In Kridhia they produce their own carob syrup, thick and sweet… Alkan Kilitkayali, the owner of the restaurant and his wife bake their own bread twice a week so everything is still home-made in Kridhia…
`I thought I was going to faint when we were looking for the possible burial site` my reader tells me.
`I think you have done something very good` I tell him, `it is such a humanitarian act…Thank you so much for doing this…`
`All these years, I was thinking of this place` he says… `I hope they find him…`
`I hope so too…`
We leave Kridhia, the village of my childhood to go back to Nicosia…
I thank my Turkish Cypriot reader for showing us the possible burial site of some `missing` Greek Cypriots and I thank the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee for coming with us to the possible burial site to investigate…
15.9.2013
Photo: The road between Eftagomi and Galatia...
(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 29th of September 2013 Sunday.
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