Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436
One of my readers, while speaking, blurts out something that strikes me as important: Some years ago, together with a friend of his, while travelling in Famagusta, his friend had pointed out a place and told him that there had been a mass grave where some Greek Cypriots were buried there… This was what Turkish Cypriots call `Varosha`, part of the town that has been settled by Turkish Cypriot refugees from Paphos…
I ask him if he could show this place to us or even better, if his friend can show it to us… He is not sure of his friend since he says, `he is an ultra-nationalist` and wouldn't come out to meet with us… He would call him anyway and ask… But he volunteers to come with me and with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to try to locate at least the area and tell us the story…
So off we go, on the 10th of November 2014 Monday morning to Famagusta…
We try to find the area he is talking about in Varosha… We drive around to see whether we can see the place he is describing…
`It was a garden with some olive trees and around it was a high wall with yellow stone…` he describes.
His friend whose mother lives in this avenue had told him that they had tried to `empty` this mass grave in the past, `they` being `the authorities` in charge in the northern part of our island.
We find the avenue they had travelled – he remembers that at some point they had turned to go to Nicosia – so the possible burial site he is talking about must be around this avenue…
I have some assumptions about the place he is describing: Some years ago, another reader had shown us a garden with a stone wall around it and she had said that there had been a burial there… Next to the garden, in the road where she was living there had also been suspicion about a burial site: When they had come from the southern part of the island to be settled in these houses of Greek Cypriots from Varosha, they had found a big hole in the middle of their road and for many years, the hole stayed as it is like a scar until sometime later the municipality had put asphalt over it…
A few years ago the municipality had gone there to do some work concerning pipes and my reader had called me to try to suggest that since they are digging the asphalt, why doesn't the CMP start excavations here – I had told what she had suggested to the officials of the CMP but nothing happened. Probably CMP officials warned the workers to contact them if they found any remains during digging… The municipality did its work on pipes and closed the hole and left… The place remains as a possible burial site that we had shown with my reader to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee – there needs to be investigation about both this hole, as well as the adjacent garden with the wall surrounding it – years ago there had been information about this garden, that there might be a possible burial site in the garden…
We thank my reader for trying to locate the suspicious garden with us and he promises to try to contact his friend and try to get more information – since we now know on which avenue this possible burial site was located, the Turkish Cypriot investigators can go and make investigation about it. Our reader has given us a good clue and a good description: What remains is for the Turkish Cypriot officials to start investigating this area…
Our next stop is on the road from Kalopsida to Kuklia where the relative of a Turkish Cypriot `missing` person wants to show us another possible burial site… His father has been `missing` since 1974 on the road between Kalopsida and Kuklia and he has been trying very hard to find his burial site, going around the villages where Greek Cypriots from Kalopsida live, talking to them, trying to find any information about his father's burial site. There has been some digging for this `missing person` in the area without any concrete result… Now he shows us a big havuza (water pond) where once upon a time, water used to come from different wells for irrigation – he says that he had found some information about the possible burial site of his father, that he is buried in a water well in this field… Further up, we see a water well, closed now… We thank him and say goodbye to continue to Epicho (Abohor) to the possible burial site of some `missing`
Greek Cypriots – this had been a big hole where the British had taken `havara` soil while building the road from Epicho to Beykeuy – the big hole was around 20 meters to 30 meters in diameter and 3.5-4 meters deep… In 1974, one of my readers had seen that they had buried some `missing` Greek Cypriots in that `havara hole` - seven or eight of them, they had been killed in the war and after the war the bodies were collected and buried in that `havara hole`… Sometime later this area had become a rubbish dump and the whole village as well as those from surrounding villages would dump their rubbish here... Not only the hole but the whole area would be full of garbage as well as remnants from constructions…
We have been working on this area for many years and when finally the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee began digging, they stopped since they found `asbestos` in the rubbish dump…
Archaeologists were sent for training about how to handle asbestos and experts came to see the rubbish dump… The mukhtar of Epicho wanted to make a park here so he had the area fenced off so no one would be able to throw any more garbage here – but the damage is already done…
We walk around and see broken pieces of asbestos in the area… These came from renovations or constructions – old water pipes or old asbestos lamarina was thrown here, now making it difficult to dig since it might harm the health of archaeologists… They got some special clothing and special gear but still they are not so willing to dig and they say this to us when we visit the area… The Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee will decide how to carry on excavations here with proper health measures, if possible…
We walk towards the second big hole that the mukhtar himself had shown us, saying there might have been two or three `missing persons` buried there. In and around this hole too, there is asbestos…
The mukhtar is waiting for the work of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to be finalized here so that he can continue with his park project – they had already planted a lot of trees but they have now wilted – the old rubbish dump looks like a sinister place – I hope that one day it will really become a nice park with trees where children can play and people can have nice picnics…
Cyprus is scarred: Wherever we go, we see the signs of these scars… When you know the stories, these scars become scars in your heart and you carry them around forever in your soul…
Cyprus needs to heal from these scars but as things stand today, we are so far away from healing…
21.11.2014
Photo: From the rubbish damp at Epikho...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 7th of December, 2014 Sunday.
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