Story of the ironsmith Fuat…

Story of the ironsmith Fuat…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

On the 9th of March 2014, a dusty, windy, rainy Sunday morning, I go to the Nicosia Cemetery for the funeral of a `missing` Turkish Cypriot whose remains we helped to find together with a Greek Cypriot reader from Paphos.
This kind hearted reader from Paphos had done a lot of investigation – voluntarily – about the `missing` Turkish Cypriots and we had met and we had arranged to go to Konia together in order to show a possible burial site…
The site was eerie – apparently it had been an execution area – isolated and not visible from around…
There had been a little waterfall and some Greek Cypriots had buried a `missing` Turkish Cypriot under the waterfall…
My reader from Paphos had also shown some other possible burial sites in Paphos…
In Konia where we had shown, the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee would start digging and soon they would find the remains of a `missing person`…
After a couple of years with the DNA process, we would find out that it is Fuat Mulla Salih's remains that were found on the spot that my reader had shown us…
Fuat Mulla Salih was originally from Nicosia but he had got married in Paphos and had 11 children when he went `missing`. It was in July 1967 and his 11 kids and his wife would wait for him to return, feel agony and pain for so many years, almost half a century – exactly 47 years after, his remains would be returned to them in a small coffin to be buried.
His daughter who lives in Canada would make the funeral speech, talking about what a kind hearted, straight person, a good person her father was… She would tell us how they all missed their father all those years… I would be afraid to ask the question: `How did you survive as 11 children?` My heart would cry and I would fall silent…
One of his friends, Nuri Silay had told me the story of Fuat Mulla Salih back in 2007… He too was rounded up and taken by some Greek Cypriots to be killed but one of his close friends in Ktima, Paphos, a Greek Cypriot dealing with timber had saved the life of Nuri Silay at the last moment.
`He had hidden me and saved my life, otherwise I too would be missing…` he would tell me.
He would tell me of a possible burial site in the Vassiliko area – a well in a garden shown to him by one of his Greek Cypriot friends, saying that some Turkish Cypriot `missing persons` had been buried there… But no matter how we tried, Nuri Silay would not come with us to show us this well… Because his wife was afraid for the life of her husband and we would not be able to convince her that it's safe…
`This garden was once a vegetable garden, it had a pond, lots of water and they used to grow vegetables. But then it was abandoned and the well there had dried up… According to my Greek Cypriot friends, after the killings, there was such a stench from the well that they could not pass from there...`
Another Turkish Cypriot friend, a researcher from Paphos had come to my help to tell me the story of what had happened in July 1967 in Paphos. He said:
`In July 1967, 8 Turkish Cypriots were killed and 5 Turkish Cypriots went `missing`.
It all started with someone from the village Stemi, firing on some Turkish Cypriots, killing one young Turkish Cypriot and wounding some others. Some Turkish Cypriots would cut the road from Suskiou for `revenge` - they had stopped a taxi driver… This taxi driver was from Paphos and he was a communist, close to the Turkish Cypriots. His customers in the taxi were from Djelodjedara village - a pregnant woman and her 21 year old son. This Greek Cypriot woman was going to the Paphos Hospital in order to give birth.
The pregnant woman had begged the ones who had stopped the taxi: `If you don't have mercy for the child I am carrying, have mercy for the six kids I have left behind…` But they had no mercy, these Turkish Cypriots sent from Stavrokonnou and they had killed the pregnant woman, her son and the taxi driver… Next day, the Greek Cypriots had decided to take `revenge` so they would round up Turkish Cypriots in Ktima, Paphos at the local market, whoever they could catch and kill… As a result 8 Turkish Cypriots were killed and 5 Turkish Cypriots went `missing`.
A Greek Cypriot woman who was working in a coffee shop in the market had warned the Turkish Cypriots not to go to the market `Because some Greek Cypriots will kidnap them` but they did not take her seriously.
It is impossible to think that the Turkish Cypriot administrators of Paphos did not foresee that Greek Cypriots would immediately react to the killing of a pregnant Greek Cypriot woman. What is interesting for me is that both in the conflict of 63-64 in Paphos and in 1967, Yiorgadjis had been present in person in Paphos… `
Yet another Greek Cypriot reader would share what he knew about what had happened in Moutallo in Paphos – he had known Fuat Mulla Salih… He told me:
`Fuat was `Demirdji` (`blacksmith`, `ironsmith`) and he was a very good person. He had a shop. He was kidnapped by two fanatic Greek Cypriots. In those days Fuat was mending a water depot. Once upon a time he had fixed my motorcycle.
Some of my friends and relatives saw how he was kidnapped. These two fanatic Greek Cypriots had come on a one-way street, they were driving a BMW car, owned by a rich woman called L. They had taken Fuat and on the back seat each one had sit on each side of Fuat. But then they realized that there was no one to drive the car so one of them got off the back seat and drove the BMW away. I heard that the ones who had kidnapped him had later joined EOKA-B – they were from the village S. and their names were ……`
The funeral is sad, his wife Meryem cannot stand so they bring a chair for her to sit… She holds my hand and says, `Thank you so much… May God give you everything you want… I just wish you would find him earlier…` She is in tears…
So many people suffered, so many children left without fathers, so many wives without husbands, so many mothers without sons or daughters… The pain has the same colour in Cyprus – it is not `Greek`, it is not `Turkish` - it is the colour of human pain, the heart ache, the tears, the abyss we fall into losing the ones we love…
I thank my Greek Cypriot reader for helping to find the remains of this Turkish Cypriot `missing person` - with such humanity, perhaps we can balance the inhumanity of all these real life stories in Cyprus…

9.3.2014

Photo: Fuat Mulla Salih

(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 30th March 2014, Sunday.

Stories from Ebicho…

Stories from Ebicho…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

We go once again to Ebicho (Abohor) village outside Nicosia on the 25th of February 2014 Tuesday – we've been coming to this village so many times and yet there is more work to do, more investigations to follow…
Together with Murat Soysal, Xenophon Kallis and Okan Oktay we go to a spot where there is a possible burial site. One of the Turkish Cypriot investigators, Hikmet Selchuklu is also with us…
We wait for my reader to come from the fields – he has his sheep out and he comes quickly to show us the spot where there has been no digging yet.
Back in 1974, after the 14th of August, a Greek Cypriot soldier was caught and taken to the centre of the village. He was on the edge of the village and an old Turkish Cypriot woman had given him water and food… Most probably this old woman had not left like the Turkish Cypriots of the village on the 20th of July but had remained in her house…
Later when the Turkish Cypriots would return to the village after the 14th of August they would discover him and take him to the centre of the village. One of the children present there on that day would tell me the story years later, that they would set up a `court` in the street, they would `judge` him and then as he would be leaving, he would try to take the gun of a Turkish Cypriot soldier and then he would be shot. He would be taken further up to this field where they had been keeping straw for animals… They would put the dead body among some straw and try to burn the straw… According to my readers, he would later be buried in this field…
My reader tells us that for some construction his son tried to take some soil from this field but those in the village told them `Not to dig…` That `if they dug too much, they would encounter the bones of that Greek Cypriot killed in the village…`
He shows us the rough location… Many years ago, there had been digging but not here, much further up…
Other readers had also told me about this place and I had written about it years ago… But it's better to show it to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee so that they can list it as a possible burial site to be excavated.
He also tells us of some burials in Voni village… Voni was a place where they kept Greek Cypriots as prisoners of war.
`There had been two natural deaths, because of age` he tells us.
`They were buried in the yard of the church where there was a cemetery… But they had also brought three dead bodies I don't know from where – they were buried just outside the church, outside the wall – to the south of the church – maybe five meters away from the wall of the church…`
There is another burial site of about six `missing` Greek Cypriots in Voni, not far from the church, under a fig tree but it has been many years since I had written about this… He too, is not sure of the details now…
He is in a hurry to get back to his sheep so we thank him and say goodbye and go to the site where archaeologists are busy digging at the side of the road.
We say hello to the archaeologists and as we leave them we meet another reader of mine…
`I told the archaeologists' he says `that I had seen three dead bodies where they are digging now… I am not sure if they were buried there or not but I had seen not one but three…`
According to one of my readers, these three persons were from the group arrested in the house of Frosso Dimou in Voni… They had been trying to escape from the shooting…
He tells us of another place where he had seen two dead bodies after the war while driving on the dirt track between Voni and Ebicho…
`Why don't you get in the car and we go and you show us` I tell him and he comes with us to go outside Ebicho, to show us the place where he had seen two dead bodies…
`This was called the well of Karavas` he says… `The two bodies I saw were not far from the well, in the middle of the field… They were civilian… It looked as though they were trying to escape and shot…`
There has been digging but not here, across the other field from the dirt track, further up…
We thank him and take him back to the village.
Next we go to the rubbish damp area – the mukhtar of the village, together with a young friend are waiting for us there… They are developing the rubbish damp – they have fenced it and put up a gandjelli so that no one can enter and dump rubbish here… They are planting trees and will make it a picnic area…
We wanted to meet for this reason because here, in the rubbish damp is a possible burial site and we show this to the mukhtar and he speaks to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee… According to an eye witness, they had buried around 8-10 `missing` Greek Cypriots in the havara cavity as I had written in these pages before… It would be a pity to leave this possible burial site as it is since the little plants they have planted a few days ago will grow and become trees and when it will be time for digging, it will be more problematic… Plus, if there are in fact people buried here, these trees will probably damage the bones, taking calcium from the bones, wrapping their roots around the bones… That's why I arranged this urgent visit to speak with the mukhtar so that if the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee decides to exhume here, they can act quickly…
Okan Oktay, the Coordinator of Exhumations reassures the mukhtar that if they take out the trees they had planted, they will replant them when the excavations are done.
We thank the mukhtar and get out of the rubbish damp – it has been cleaned and maybe in 15-20 years, it will have a different appearance when the small plants will grow into trees… They have planted pine trees and cypress trees…
The planting of trees here shows us that life does not sit idle and wait for us… Life continues… The land where `missing persons` are buried changes, roads are built, houses are built, trees are planted… Even the `marks` people made in their minds about certain possible burial sites change: A fig tree or a carob tree might be cut, a dirt track might be built for the fishermen to use like it happened in Yialousa once and all of these things confuse witnesses about burial sites… In Yialousa there had been no dirt track for fishermen and there was a burial site of two Turkish Cypriots `missing` from 1964 – I had taken the witness there and when he saw the dirt track, he was quite surprised… We had to take him there twice and finally the remains of the two `missing` were found but it showed us how things have changed dramatically over the years and how some possible burial sites, if we are not quick enough, might disappear forever, making it very
difficult to find… Perhaps this is the other big tragedy in Cyprus and the other big `crime` - waiting for over 40 or 50 years to start exhuming possible burial sites… Years have flown by and our geography changed in some places like Mia Milia completely, making it more difficult to find the possible burial sites…
Soon after our visit to the rubbish damp in Ebicho, the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee starts excavations there… While the excavations continue, another reader calls to tell me that his brother has information that two `missing persons` were also buried in the next havara cavity just behind where digging has begun – it is good to explore this second site in the rubbish damp as well… Immediately I inform the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee so that they can investigate further…
Soon after the digging begins, it stops because apparently some people at some point in time have dumped asbestos in the big havara cavity… Since asbestos is carcinogenic, the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee has to stop the excavations in the rubbish damp at Ebicho…
If you know of possible burial sites, it is time to speak up now… Because life does not leave any space - as years go by, geography changes, making it more difficult to find possible burial sites…

2.3.2014

Photo: Digging at the havara cavity in Ebicho (Abohor) village...

(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 23rd of March 2014, Sunday.

Behind the Tekke…

Behind the Tekke…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

Our first stop is in Nicosia, behind the `Mevlevi Tekke`, now a museum but once upon a time a religious sanctuary for the `Mevlevis` - those who believed in Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi who had written beautiful poetry in his time… The Mevlevi sect was active here until 1950s and the believers would gather at the Tekke in their long white robes to listen to music and to dance – the swirling dervishes – as a prayer to God. In one of the most famous poems, Mevlana says:
`Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, idolater, worshiper of fire,
Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are.…`
One of the earliest Pashas of the Ottomans in Cyprus had been from the Mevlevi sect and he had arranged to build the Mevlevi Tekke here, in the centre of Nicosia. Behind the Tekke was big gardens that belonged to the sanctuary...
At the end of December 1963 when intercommunal fighting began in Nicosia, because Turkish Cypriots could not get out of Nicosia, they had started burying their dead behind the Tekke, in these gardens... At that time, there had been nothing here – both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots killed during the fighting or killed due to the `conflict` were buried here. I had taken a witness who had helped bury them and he had given his account of what had happened to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee – he had been a young boy of 17-18 in those times, they had fled from Kaymakli (Omorphita) in fear of their lives and families were settled in a cinema close by. One night, some Turkish Cypriots had come to the cinema to take youngsters to help bury some Greek Cypriots killed in the fighting... They would be digging graves and helping to bury them. He had shown us the spot where he thought they had buried the Greek Cypriot `missing` from
end of 1963.
A few days ago one of my readers would call me to tell me that he had found out some other `missing` Greek Cypriots had been buried somewhere in Phota village. The commander in those times in 1963-64 of the walled city were good friends with the commander in the area of Phota and when they had caught some Greek Cypriots who had passed to the Turkish quarter of Nicosia by accident or those they took and arrested for whatever pretext, he would send some of them to be killed and buried in the area of Phota. Phota, close to Kirni and Boghazi, was a `pure` Turkish Cypriot area so what my reader has told me sounds probable... Currently there is exhumations in Phota and perhaps the news that there is exhumations triggered this piece of information to come to the surface... But as always, I would need to investigate more. My reader promises to find out the possible burial site in Phota from 1963-64.
But today we are behind the Tekke, at a parking lot between two buildings. The Evkaf had built these in the gardens of the Tekke... My witness shows us the location where he saw some Greek Cypriot `missing` being buried in 1974.
`It was right after the 20th of July 1974 and I saw a truckload of Greek Cypriots being buried somewhere here` he points out to Murat Soysal, Okan Oktay and Xenophon Kallis from the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, who came with us so we could show them this possible burial site of some `missing` Greek Cypriots from 1974.
`Perhaps, some of the remains stayed under this building but perhaps if you excavate the parking lot, starting from here, you might find some remains...`
He had known the truck driver, a guy from around Vassilia who is no longer alive now. The guy from around Vassilia did not have such a good name, in fact he had had a terrible nickname, they called him `C.......`
My witness had been working somewhere close to the Tekke and that's how he happened to be in this area that day...
He had seen this truck driver taking watches and rings from the dead bodies and had warned him:
`Why are you doing that? Don't! It's a shame!`
And the truck driver had told him:
`They won't be needing these where they have gone... But these, I need them...` and had continued to take whatever he could find from the dead bodies.
The name of this driver has been popping up during my investigations, both his and his brother's names were mentioned in connection with some `disappearances` during 1974. They had been from around Vassilia and had fled in 1963 and had gone to live elsewhere as refugees – both brothers had been drivers, one of them a bus driver who would take Turkish Cypriot workers to the Morphou and Vassilia area to work in citrus plants or in collecting carrots and other vegetables. Recently a woman had told me that the driver with the nickname `C...` had been boasting about taking a woman and her child in 1974, how he had taken them and how he had kept them... She had shaken her head and whispered to me to go to the coffee shops in the area and try to listen to the old men if they would speak and tell me what had happened...
Behind the Tekke, I see one of my distant cousins in the area and we start talking:
`We built our shop here at the end of the 70s` he says. `In those days, this whole lot was completely empty – there had been a water depot somewhere there but nothing else... We had heard rumours that while that building was being constructed, some bones had been found...`
So now we have confirmation from two different eye witnesses that I have taken here at different times that some Greek Cypriots `missing` both from 1963-64 and 1974 had been buried in these grounds.
My witness explains to us the former look of the area:
`There used to be small houses here but they are demolished now...`
We walk with Kallis towards the front of the building – it is clear that it is the same area our first witness who had pointed out to us the possible burial site of some of the Greek Cypriot `missing` from 1963-64...Perhaps this had been a `burial site` they had started using in 1963 and continued to use it in 1974 as well...
As we are about to leave, we encounter another reader who had been a witness to a burial after the 14th of August 1974... He had been on top of the Kornaro Hotel in Nicosia and he asks me when they will dig there...
I introduce him to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and he tells them his story...
`If you get me up on the roof of Kornaro Hotel` he says, `I can show you the place where the burial took place. We were up on the roof of Kornaro – to the right of Kornaro, there had been some trees. Between the trees and Kornaro, we saw bulldozers digging and burying... An officer had come to visit and he told us `Where shall we take them to bury? We are burying them here... Such things happen in wartime...` I had seen a lot of dead bodies and a lot of wounded... Further up was the Grammar School... There had been a fierce fight around here in 1974 – the area was where TURDIK and ELDIK had been...`
I had published what he had told me five-six years ago and then a very detailed interview in 2011, that is three years ago... Because Kornaro Hotel is now in the `military zone` we have no way of taking him up there unless a `special permission` is given. Perhaps we can try to go up a high building from the Greek Cypriot side of the area so he can point out the possible burial site that he knows... We will continue to work on this...
Now it's time to go to Ebicho because some of my other readers are waiting to show us possible burial sites so we thank my witness who had come to show us this possible burial site in the Tekke Bahchesi and we leave Nicosia...

1.3.2014

Photo: Possible burial site at the Tekke Bahchesi...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 16th of March 2014, Sunday.

What can we learn from what Rwanda is doing right now for healing the wounds?

What can we learn from what Rwanda is doing right now for healing the wounds?

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

As there is new hope for some sort of agreement in Cyprus, perhaps it is good at looking around the globe at countries of conflict about how they are treating their traumas of the past, how they are facing the truth and how they are trying to rebuild their torn countries…
We have always spoken about the possibility of setting up some sort of `Truth and Reconciliation Committees` in order to face the traumas that our island had to go through at least in the last half century, many giving the example of South Africa.
Something new is being done in Rwanda and perhaps it can give us ideas and inspiration about how we want to take up our recent past in healing the wounds of our country…
A few days ago, I read the article written by Swanee Hunt from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, leader of `Women Waging Peace`… When she had been the US Ambassador to Austria, Swanee Hunt had worked with women from former Yugoslavia and later on had set up with inspiration given to her by our dear friend Katie Economidou the international women's organization called `Women Waging Peace` that we had become part of… Katie had convinced Swanee Hunt to bring together 10 women each from 10 conflict areas and with the 100 women to set up such an international women's organization. We had gone to Boston and had spent a month, getting together with women from other conflict areas, sharing our stories and learning about what women were doing to heal the wounds of their countries that had suffered due to colonisation and war. Swanee Hunt in her recent article entitled ` Rebuilding Rwanda: Trauma and Trust…` writes:
`Rwanda's First Lady, Jeannette Kagame, has launched yet another initiative in this tiny central African state.
Her office has started up projects advancing children, particularly girls, and providing what a business school might dub a "proof of concept" as their promotion has evolved into public policy. This particular experiment, obligatory across the rural countryside, is Ndi Umunyarwanda, 'I Am Rwandan.'
Twenty years since the 100-day genocide of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu, "It's to help people not be confused about the Hutu perpetrators, not to listen to their parents who are keeping alive old hatred," I'm told by a friend interpreting for me at her neighbourhood gathering.
That said, few youth are in attendance, even though the country's median age is less than 19.
But as the hours unfold, it's not clear the primary purpose is for the younger generation, for whom the genocide is a story, not a memory. Instead, these gatherings are trauma therapy en masse.
The meeting is in a rectangular room with two-toned walls and imposing turquoise doors.
Windows with large plastic slats frame palm tree branches outside and allow in light and breeze. Attendees, mostly men, are seated in popsicle orange, yellow, red, and purple plastic chairs. Some hundred are jammed inside, 50 outside. Loudspeakers boom through the room and the yard.
A young woman leads the crowd in a song, clapping and hopping as she belts out, "Peace is the responsibility of every Rwandan ('Yes!' sings the audience chorus)… lt's good to love our country (Yes!)… We are all relatives (Yes!)… Women, young, old, the whole country (Yes!)…Our identity should have no discrimination (Yes!)… We fought genocide (Yes!)."
The music ends, and she shouts into the microphone in a Pentecostal tone, gesticulating wildly: "Being Hutu, Tutsi, Twa is not paramount. Most important is being Rwandan. Non-Rwandans don't recognize us anymore, because they can't believe our identity is Rwandan."
Now she launches into another raucous song. "We had a king," her voice bounces off the walls. "He had slaves but never discriminated until missionaries came. They colonized us by teaching our country 'divide and rule.'"
A documentary begins to roll. "In the old days," the narrator explains nostalgically, "young Rwandans were taught our history, how to wage war, how to dance." Fascinating black-and-white-flecked clips follow: first French Catholic missionaries, then Hutu political leaders making outrageous allegations about the Tutsi minority.
Jean Kambanda, prime minister during the genocide, is wearing camouflage, even though he is not in the army. He holds up a pistol. "Everyone can have a gun," he shouts. "They came with machetes yesterday to arm the militias. The ones for you are on the way. In 10 days you can finish this!"
The genocide itself is given about 10 seconds. "Everyone knows that part," someone whispers to me.
The film ends with the Rwandan Patriotic Front leader, Paul Kagame, who has de facto led the country ever since the genocide.
"We must be inclusive and just. We must not have politics of hate. We have died many times; it's time for us to live."
After the documentary, the audience focuses on three leaders sitting behind a long table. The first is a young man: "We were 18 clans, but we didn't discriminate among Hutu farmers, Tutsi cattlemen, Twa potters. Rwandans were living in harmony until missionaries started teaching about differences…. The missionaries taught that Hutu are the true Rwandans. But we can't blame everything on the colonizer; Rwandan ourselves believed the strangers as they urged genocide."
The second speaker — Mathilde – explains the central purpose of the meeting.
"It's time to tell each other your experiences, even if you disagree with each other." To do that, Mathilde says, "Everyone must open up. People's children must know the truth, but even as we tell them, let's remember the good and forget the bad."
A man in his 30s begins the testimonials. "I'm Rwandan." The audience claps. "I lost my father, mother, and grandfather. My other grandfather" he said, "run away and hide in a safe place. I have wounds from my history, but I'm better than I was at the time of the genocide." More clapping.
And so an hour passes, as one person after another stands and tells a 20-year-old tale of suffering, losses, fear, abuse. But each story ends with the strong assertion of forward-looking unity, "I am Rwandan."
Will this national soul-baring be unifying? Two decades of silence have muted a festering pain. "Some are ready to talk about the past, others are not yet. Some will never be," the First Lady tells me. "But many who come forward with their stories will feel heard, respected – and that's an essential part of healing."
We don't have to copy anything, we can create our own way of healing our country but at the same time we don't have to reinvent methods that have been tried in other conflict areas… We can take inspiration from Rwanda, from South Africa, from France and Germany – there are thousands of examples – the main thing perhaps is to have the will to do it…
I think it's time to start thinking about how we will do this in practice…

22.2.2014

Photo: At the `I Am Rwandan` meeting in Kigali, a man stands to ask for unity among Hutu and Tutsi...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 9th of March 2014, Sunday.

Stories from Kyrenia…

Stories from Kyrenia…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

I meet Stella Yiallouridis, the wife of `missing` Andreas Yiallouridis to talk about what we can do to find out what had happened to him and the group he had been together with him…
Married in 1971, they had a son in 1972 and when he had gone `missing` in 1974, Stella had been pregnant – two months – to their daughter who would never have a chance to see or touch her father…
In July 1974 when the war began, Andreas Yiallouridis had been called as a `reservist` and had been together with a group, a total of nine persons, who would go `missing` in Kyrenia.
They had taken refuge in a house, later on we would find out that it was the house of a British pilot… From there Andreas would call his wife Stella and when Stella would ask him where in Kyrenia they were, he would answer `We don't know…`
They would find out from the telephone number that this was the Sir Arnold Toynbee Street and that they were in the house of British pilot J.V. Macarthy… They would inform the UN to go and save them from there…
Maroulla Chaghalli from Kyrenia lived in the same street so we would call Maroulla to see if she would come with us to show us the pilot's house and to try to dig further for information about what had happened to the group. The remains of two from the group had been found during the exhumations at the Botanical Garden area in Kyrenia but the rest – the seven Greek Cypriots last time heard of in the pilot's house – are still `missing`.
On the 7th of February 2014 Friday I would arrange with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to come with us to go to the Sir Arnold Toynbee Street in Kyrenia and we would all go together, the 78 year old Maroulla Chaghallis, Stella Yiallouridis, myself and from the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee Murat Soysal, Okan Oktay, Xenophon Kallis and a Turkish Cypriot investigator Hikmet Selchuklu.
We would go to find the Sir Arnold Toynbee Street in Kyrenia, now called `Gulbahar Street`, the name of a deceased Turkish Cypriot woman teacher who had been settled in the house of the pilot at the end of 1974. Gulbahar which means `Rose spring` had been a very famous, very active Turkish Cypriot teacher from Limassol – she had raised many good students, had been very active with civil society organisations and charities, helping a lot with children's charity associations. Everyone loved their Gulbahar Teacher… They had moved from Limassol in December 1974 to the house of the pilot. Gulbahar Resa, later on known as Gulbahar Gochkun, lived in this house until she died a decade and a half ago… The street first had been named `Islam Bey Sokak` but when she died, they gave her name to the street in her good memory as `Gulbahar Street`. Her son Resa is a good friend who works at PEO and I would speak to him later about the house…
`When we moved in the pilot's house, there had been no furniture – it had been ransacked` he would tell me. `But there were no bullet holes either inside or outside the house, no sign of any fighting or any shooting…`
The yard of the house had been cement, no soil…
We would go and look at the house where the group of seven `missing` Greek Cypriots had last been seen.
Maroulla Chaghalli whose house had been in the same street had heard someone shouting in Greek on the 25th of July 1974.
`We heard someone saying `Why do you break the doors of the houses to enter?` and then we heard gun shots… After 15 minutes a group of Turkish soldiers, accompanied by two Turkish Cypriots came to our house. One of those Turkish Cypriots we knew as the son of Moustafa, who had a mandra further up… He told us not to be afraid that they would not allow them to hurt us… We ended up in Aghirdagh and there another Turkish Cypriot whom my husband knew, helped us to come back to Kyrenia, to the Dome Hotel…`
Stella Yiallouridis in our first meeting had given me a telephone number of a Turkish Cypriot whom she had said was the Turkish Cypriot who had gone to the house of Maroulla Chaghallis, the son of Moustafa. I had called him and he had come to meet Maroulla when we had gone to the `Gulbahar Street` but it would turn out to be a `mistaken identity` - no, he was not the son of the Moustafa with the mandra, but the son of another Moustafa. He would tell us who the sons of the Moustafa were for whom we had been looking for and we would go to visit them in their shop. But no, they did not quite remember the incident – perhaps it was their elder brother who had passed away some years ago? This family had been a good family who had saved the lives of many Greek Cypriots during the war… Some had even called them `traitors` for exactly that reason: For saving the lives of some Greek Cypriots from the Kyrenia area. When we would go to their shop together with
Maroulla Chaghallis and Stella and the officials of the CMP, both of the sons of Moustafa would tell me that they read my articles about `missing persons` every day in YENIDUZEN and would congratulate me for the good work we had been doing. One of the sons would enquire about Mahallebaris from Kyrenia – he is a good friend of the son of the `missing` Mahallebaris and the son would visit him from time to time… We would say goodbye to this kind hearted family from Kyrenia who had saved the lives of many Greek Cypriots during the war in 1974.
The information that Stella had given me that they might have been killed and buried in the yard of the pilot's house would turn out to be false since the yard had been all cement back in 1974, no soil to bury them in…
There had been another piece of information that Maroulla Chaghallis had heard from a Greek Cypriot years ago that they might have been buried in an empty field next to her house – now this field is the yard of the Kyrenia police where they do the tests for the cars once a year for traffic.
The exhumations at the Botanical Gardens in Kyrenia were done several times but there are still possible burial sites in that area… We had gone there many times – the area has changed dramatically and some apartments had been built in this area, a road passing over a possible burial site… We do not yet know if the group in the pilot's house had been arrested and taken to the area around Botanical Gardens but we will continue with the help of our readers to search every single item of information and to try to find out the fate of this `missing` group from the pilot's house…
It is not easy for Maroulla, at the age of 78 to go to her house, to show us the pilot's house, to go and speak with the sons of Moustafa – all of these would bring back memories of the past… It is not easy for Stella to look at the house of the pilot and to think about what might have happened there or afterwards what might have happened. The worst thing on this earth is not to know… Once you know, you find a way to deal with it but not knowing would paralyse you and pose you with thousands of questions about what might have happened… I whisper to Okan Oktay to take them to lunch to change the mood of the day and I suggest a restaurant not in the old harbour but behind the castle where there is a very open view of the sea, our Mediterranean, our blue sea so that Maroulla and Stella can rest a little bit and calm down their emotions simply by looking at the view… Kyrenia has become a place of hotels and casinos with terrible traffic,
buildings, buildings, buildings everywhere but this spot I have chosen is very quiet and calm, offering us an eternal view of how Kyrenia once was, the eternal beauty of the Kyrenia shores… We sit and look at the crows perching on the rocks, the little fishermen's boats entering the harbour, the castle glistening in the sun, trying to `normalize` life and heal the wounds of the past…

8.2.2014

Photo: The pilot's house...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 2nd of March 2014 Sunday.