Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436
One of my readers, a woman over 70 years old calls… I remember her from my childhood days… She too, has a close relative `missing`…
`I wonder if he is buried at the Tekke Gardens in Nicosia` she says…
`I don't think so… I think he might be buried somewhere around Yeri…`
Her relative had gone `missing` back in July 1964…
`Actually I have to tell you something about Lapithos` she says:
`One of my relatives was given a house in Lapithos after 1974… When we went there, there had been a military post in her yard which was very wide… Inside the military post were five dead bodies – four men and a woman. I remember the woman was wearing an orange skirt with a wide belt… I can't really remember what the men were wearing, whether it was military or civilian clothes…
When they were taking them out of the military post, I was there… A bulldozer came and dug a big hole because they were going to bury not only one but five Greek Cypriots. The hole had been more than one meter deep… Then they buried them there, the four men and the young woman with the orange skirt… Later on they would also close the military post…
Where they had buried them was a mimosa tree… I remember thinking that `Ok, they have a good spot, with the mimosa tree nearby…`
I had put a big stone over the burial site…
They must have been killed in the house because I remember our relative's kitchen: There was blood all over the place… No matter how hard she tried to clean, the stains would always remain there… There was no cleaning liquid she did not try… It was like a reminder that some people had been killed there, in the kitchen…
Years passed and someone removed the stone… Some villagers cut the tree or the tree grew old and branches fell but the tree is no longer there…
When kids were small and they were playing around the burial site, I would shout at them to go away… `Don't play there kids, there are some dead bodies there, go away, go further!` I would say and the children would go away…
There was a huge yard and there was a neighbour of my relative living in this house in Lapithos… When the time came to put some wire to separate the yard so they could each have their own, I made sure that the burial site would stay in the neighbour's yard, not my relative's yard… So they put the wire and the grave remained in the neighbour's yard… But still, it was impossible to remove the blood stains in the kitchen, a constant reminder…
Some years ago, I heard that the Missing Persons' Committee came and dug but did not find anything… I was shocked and could not believe that they could not find them… They went away and later came back and dug some more, someone showing them another place but still they did not find anything… I know all five are there so how come they could not find them? I had put a big stone on top of the burial site but someone removed it… The mimosa had been there, very near where they were buried but the mimosa is gone… I still think about those five bodies, one of them the woman with the orange skirt and the big belt and can't believe that they were not found… Surely they did not evaporate into thin air…`
`Can you show us this place?` I ask her…
`No, no, no! I can't be involved… I don't want to be involved, I am just telling you…`
`At least can you tell me the name of your relative's neighbour? So that we can go and investigate in his yard?` I ask her.
Reluctantly she gives me the name of the neighbour and I note it down…
`What if I come and take you and we go there alone, just the two of us, you show me and later on I can show to the Committee?`
`No, no, no! I don't want to be involved!` she says.
It looks impossible to convince her but even this information is very valuable so I would try to find another way to try to locate the burial site…
I thank her for calling me and promise to visit her one day…
Imagine her relative's and her feelings: Having to live together with blood stains in your kitchen where you suspect they had been killed and no matter how hard you try, you cannot remove the stains! Imagine how horrifying it is to try to get used to this, waking up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and have a sip of water and you would walk into the kitchen, only to encounter the blood stains… Imagine looking out at your garden and always knowing that four men and a woman, five Greek Cypriots have been buried in your own yard and having to live with this information for forty years… Imagine not being able to do anything, not being able to open your mouth until now, having to live with this trauma even if you had nothing to do with it! Imagine the shock and horror of having to live with five dead bodies in your own yard, chasing away kids, in case they fell in the mass grave! Imagine thinking of the mimosa tree and feeling grateful
that at least these five persons have a good spot with the mimosa tree, next to the mass grave where they have been buried… Imagine locking up this information inside you and not being able to speak to anyone about it until one day, you would find the courage to pick up the phone and make a call and blurt it out…
I call Okan Oktay, the Coordinator of the Exhumations of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, as well as Xenophon Kallis, the Assistant to the Greek Cypriot member of the Committee to tell them what I found out from this old woman reader of mine…
Okan promises to find the photos of the excavations in the place she has mentioned…
`Perhaps I can take her these photos and maybe over the photos she can show us the location, since she refuses to come with us to the site…` I tell Okan… `And later we can go and check this site to see if anyone remembers the mimosa tree that has been cut…`
Next week we plan to go and see… Meanwhile I must get the photos from Okan when they had done the excavations there back in 2007 and show them to my reader to see if she can show me the burial site…
I feel sorry that both she and her relative were traumatized in this way and had to live almost half a century with this trauma…
And I feel proud of her because she managed to get herself out of the `paralysis` created by this trauma and pick up the phone and call me… Even this is a step forward in curing her traumas…
19.10.2014
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 9th of November 2014, Sunday.
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