Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
The witness is old, has spent time in Arab countries working after 1974 for many years so he can speak English… He is calm and a happy person, which is rare to find nowadays… He is one of my readers and with him and the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, I have arranged to go to Myrtou so that he can show us a possible burial site of one `missing person`.
He tells me stories about Myrtou, how Myrtou was a place that would take workers since there was the monastery Agios Panteleimonas that had a lot of land in the area… Once upon a time in this area they would plant cotton and workers would work in the cotton fields… They would get tobacco from Yialousa and roll into cigarettes here and export to England… They would grow tangerines, oranges, carobs, olives… They would collect mushrooms and asparagus and also make gypsum from stones of the area in gaminis… Myrtou was famous for its honey, it had wild flowers, particularly Tulipa Cypria… The monastery had cows and sheep…
Once upon a time, there had been life in the monastery but nowadays, it is falling apart, that beautiful building, decayed and with lack of care, it shows the destruction of a culture, the destruction of a way of life, lonely, just standing there as if proof that terrible things have been happening on this island and that nobody cares… Because if there had been care for life and culture, the monastery would not be in this shape… Agios Panteleimonas was in the old days the hope for people with serious illnesses like losing the eye sight, not being able to walk and many came to pray here, with the hope for protection. According to the villagers, many Greek Cypriots, as well as Turkish Cypriots with such serious illnesses came to pray at the monastery… Now we would only hear stories about this while the monastery itself awaits renovation…
Once upon a time, this monastery had been one of the richest monasteries and had a lot of land around Pendaya, Ashera, Kato Moni, Agia Irini, Panagra… The Metropolitis of Kyrenia would make an agreement with the Grand Vizier in Constantinopolis in 1754 and this monastery too, would pay taxes to the Ottomans… The villagers would name a big pine tree after the metropolitis was killed in 1821 by the Ottomans in Nicosia… Villagers would go to rest under this big pine tree for a few hours every day…
The witness tells me that right after Assomato village, the weather would be different… Even if Assomato would be hot in the summer, Myrtou would be cooler… In fact, even in this season when we have had no rain, Myrtou is greener than the other villages we passed through… It stands 1000 feet above sea level so perhaps that explains this greenery and the good weather even in summertime…
The witness tells me that years and years ago many people came to work in Myrtou, because of the monastery… They would work only for their daily bread, without any sort of payment. They would stay and settle here, get married, have children, build houses so that's how Myrtou would develop… Myrtou, nowadays is called `Chamlibel` by Turkish Cypriots. Yes, there are people living here, people get married, have children, build houses and in this village life still continues… If you do not know anything of its past, it's just another village… Only if you know people connected with memories of Myrtou, then you would start realizing what sort of loss it has been for our country…
We go inside the village, at a place called `Vrisi`… There used to be lots of water in the area once upon a time… At the place called `Vrisi`, one `missing` person had been buried… The witness shows us this place and we take photos and coordinates, together with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee…
Further up stands a beautiful stone house, the stones built like dantella (lace)… In old times, in this area, stones were free, not expensive as today therefore they were building their houses of stones, they explain to me. The ones who live in this house now only come once a week, we find out – the beautiful stone house belonged to Nikos Samuel family, a rich family whose relatives had a school in Nicosia.
In the village we come across an old man, a refugee from Fasli village… He had become a refugee twice – in 1963 he fled from Fasli in Paphos to Antrolikou and then to Myrtou in 1974… Has he been back to his village? `Yes` he says, `but it is so far and I am so old, it is very difficult to go again…`
The Turkish Cypriot investigators will take our witness back to Nicosia and we will continue to Lapithos to meet another reader of mine… I thank him from the heart for doing this…
Last week this reader had called me to tell me of a possible burial site by the seaside in Lapithos. Now we meet him and he tells us his story:
`Back in 1977 I used to come to fish here, by the seaside` he says… `One day I found a military helmet, with a hole – apparently that person who wore the helmet had been shot from his head… I took the helmet home as a memento of those days and later on, in the same field, I saw a skull, it had no chin… Right after the war in 1974, this whole area was full of dead bodies of soldiers and they buried them randomly and that's why I had found the skull…`
We are at an area I had written a lot about just by the sea – we are between Rita on the Rocks and the Incirli Plaj - further up is a fenced area which is a military area where witnesses had told me they had seen human remains while working during the fencing of the area… Just across the road was a tomato field where remains of 40 `missing persons` had been found during exhumations of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee. They had also dug in this field where we are standing now, a small area but did not find anything.
Some years ago, this field had been turned into an area for 4x4 jeeps so a lot of soil had been taken and the land was turned upside down… Xenophon Kallis starts investigating and finds some bones, some of them animal, one of them that might be human or animal. They will send this bone to the laboratory for analysis because it looks like a human bone…
These had been the killing fields – my reader tells me that during the war, a small team of Greeks and Greek Cypriots had tried to come through the sea to this area. According to my reader, `The Turkish soldiers did not touch them and allowed them to land from the sea and then surrounded them and there was a fierce fight here… There were many bodies scattered around and later on they would bury them randomly…`
A Turkish Cypriot couple come to take a look at what we are doing in this field… She is from Stavrokonnou, her cousin also `missing`, killed by some Turkish Cypriots due to internal strife among the TMT of the village back in 1966… She points out that there had been an open well in this field and when her goat fell, she herself closed its mouth… She and her husband had helped the Missing Persons' Committee, pointing out various possible burial sites… About the tomato field where the remains of 40 `missing` persons had been found, she points out that perhaps there might be more under the road that was built in 1975 to go up to Lapithos… Her husband says that `We used to plant that field and there were women clothes, we used to encounter those women clothes…`
The road was built after refugees came to settle in Lapithos in 1975…
She says that they had also shown some other burial sites in the area to the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and invites me to visit her… I promise to go and see her and sit down and talk about what else she might know about this whole area… I like her a lot since she is straight, playing no games, not mincing words but simply doing what has to be done: Helping out in the search for the `missing persons`, whether they are Turkish Cypriots or Greek Cypriots and she has a huge heart full of understanding and humanity.
We say goodbye to her and her husband and to my reader, thanking him for showing us this area and head back to Nicosia…
30.11.2013
Photo: At the Agios Panteleimonas Monastery at Myrtou...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 8th of December, 2013 Sunday.
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