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.
No comments:
Post a Comment