Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436
It's a long, hot summer… We try to survive in the centre of Cyprus, in Nicosia, in our garden watching our little cat's curiosity – he is interested in everything and he wants to be part of everything happening around him… If I am in the kitchen, he is there, trying to figure out how to climb to the sink to see what it is that I am doing… If I am in my room working on the computer, he climbs to the table and wants to go on the keyboard and see what's going on… If we are in the garden, he too is there, around the little pond with the turtles – he wants so much to play with the turtles but turtles are very shy and he keeps on trying to touch them with his paw, getting himself wet and then licking it off and sitting for hours by the pond, watching them eat or swim… He is a very pale yellow, almost pink and his hair is so soft… He hides under beds or chairs and at times he has a lot of energy and jumps all over the place, climbing
trees, catching bugs and bringing them in for us to see… His innocence touches our hearts…
It's a long, hot summer and we try to survive the heaviness of this land through the innocence of the animals, through the excitement of waiting for our son to come to us for a short holiday from Germany – we can only see him two or three times a year and when he comes, life becomes a festival so we wait for him to finish his studies and come back so he can cheer us up and give us hope and empower us so that we can survive the heaviness of Cyprus…
It's a long, hot summer but I continue to work as always, going to Lefkoniko to see a cousin for the first time that I never knew existed. Based in London, he has come for a short holiday and he writes to me – he too not knowing that we are cousins – and wants to show a well in his yard that have been closed…
`My grandmother always had been suspicious about this well` he explains to me… `She was saying, there would be no reason why the Greek Cypriots would close such a big well with so much water in it and she always suspected that maybe they had buried someone in the well…`
Turkish Cypriots had left the village in 1958 and would only return in 1974… In 1958 Menikou from Koufes was executed in the centre of the village by some Greek Cypriots from EOKA – a Turkish Cypriot witness to this murder, Ismail who had come across them while torturing him and protesting at what they were doing would be killed about a month later. So Turkish Cypriots would be frightened and would leave… This was my father's village, Lefkoniko and Turkish Cypriots would go to nearby Ipsillat – the Greek Cypriot mukhtar of the village would try to encourage the Turkish Cypriots to return to the village but in 1964, another Turkish Cypriot who would go to take out a license for his car would be taken by the Greek Cypriot `gang` in the village and is still `missing` until now… Soon after, those who did not want Turkish Cypriots to return to this village would demolish most of the Turkish Cypriot houses to ensure that they stay where they are…
So I go to Lefkoniko together with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee on our way to Koma tou Yialou to show a possible burial site. We stop at the centre and my cousin leads us to his house. It's behind the church this house… He shows us the well… While talking, we discover that we are cousins – his grandmother was the sister of my father… Because his mother went to England in 1956 and settled there, I probably never saw her…
He shows us the well which is closed and tells us the story… His auntie also comes and she too tells us what she remembers about the area. We take photos and coordinates – the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee will investigate about this area and see if there is really anything suspicious about this well and whether it can be a possible burial site.
It's a long, hot summer but the earth brings gifts like meeting a cousin whom I did not even know existed and finding out that one of his brothers was named after my father Niyazi. He has also written a book of memories about the 1974 war – he had been a child and had come to Cyprus for holidays and war happened and he got stuck in Cyprus… He gives us his book in English and Turkish… Written from the eyes of a child, he documents what he had seen and felt at that young age…
We thank him and say our goodbyes to move to Koma tou Yialou so I can show the olive trees where there might be a burial site of some `missing` Greek Cypriots from the village.
It's a long, hot summer but my readers continue to call and try to help so I meet them in the south and in the north of our island, we sit and talk, they give me coordinates, they give me books, they give me information about possible new burial sites…
We go to Kyrenia Boghazi together with the son of a `missing person` - he called me to explain that a bulldozer operator had found some remains when he was digging about one and a half years ago and got frightened and covered it up… Now he wants to show us this possible burial site. So I arrange to go with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and we go to Boghazi-Aghirdagh area to see a half construction where there is a house almost finished and a swimming pool being constructed… When our witness was digging for the swimming pool, he found some leg bones and got frightened. The architect had made a mistake in calculating where the swimming pool would be constructed so he told them to stop and shift it a few meters closer to the house – so they had buried the bones they had found in the place they had dug…
`If you dig around the swimming pool` he explains to us, `you would definitely find the bones there… We were frightened and did not dig more to see…`
They had got permission to cut some trees in order to build the swimming pool…
There is no one around and the whole construction site looks deserted… All around there are fences and a dog barks as we take photos and coordinates. The smell is astonishing: That of the pine trees… There is retsina on the barks, bringing me the memories from Kredhia when as children we used to collect from almond trees this kind of retsina and put them in bottles to sit in the sun to melt to be used as glue…
Later at night I would call one of my readers from Aghirdagh to tell him what we saw… He tells me of another possible burial site in Boghazi and promises to show it when I manage to arrange to go there again…
`There used to be an Englishwoman living in that house, called Sheila if I remember correctly, back in the 70s` he says…
`But it's a new house…`
`Actually it's not – it's been changed and renovated… I think the new owner was a Turkish Cypriot from London but I think he died… I don't know who it belongs to now – let me enquire…` he says.
Soon after a team from the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee starts excavations here and they start finding human remains… We need to be patient to see whether they will find only one or more than one `missing` persons' remains have been buried here…
Next week we will go to Yerolakko and Episkopi for further investigations about other possible burial sites…
The long, hot summer will end but our work and our hopes will not…
29.8.2014
Photo: View from the burial site at Aghirdagh-Boghazi.
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 21st of September 2014, Sunday.
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