Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
The news of the European Citizen's Prize to be given to me by the European Parliament brings me hundreds of messages of congratulations from readers and friends from both parts of the dividing line, from Mexico, from the US, from London, Athens and Istanbul and from all over Europe… It is my readers who have created the avalanche of information about `untold stories` of our past, it is my editors from POLITIS and YENIDUZEN, Dionisis Dionisiou and Cenk Mutluyakali who have created enough space for us to publish all this information, it is my translator from English to Greek, my dear friend Gina Chappa who made it `happen` because without her heartfelt translations, I would not be able to speak to my Greek Cypriot readers in Greek every week on Sundays in my column published in POLITIS newspaper… I thank AKEL MEPs Takis Hadjigeorgiou and Neoclis Sylikiotis for proposing my name to the European Parliament for this prize… Takis, a dear friend and a
good reader of my articles have already helped us in our search for `missing persons` in the Paphos area…
I need to mention my dear friends, relatives of `missing` like Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia, like Maria Georgiadou who have always helped me in my investigations, I need to mention my dear son and my husband for their unwavering support during all the difficulties and threats I got, I need to mention Xenophon Kallis from whom I have learnt so many aspects of how to make investigations – he has always put the relatives of `missing persons` above all as the priority – that the suffering of the relatives must be put to an end… He above all has helped pave the way for humanity above everything else… He showed us that humanity and a humanitarian perspective must win in this very sensitive area of pain and suffering… I need to thank Murat Soysal and Okan Oktay from the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee for their help during my investigations and if I want to mention names of readers, it would make a huge list – thanks to all! My dear friend,
journalist Andreas Paraschos, I must mention – he too have been giving his full support to my work throughout all these years as he had passed through the same venues himself many years ago…
And most touching are the calls I receive… A woman reader called Fatma calls me from the farm she is working at and says:
`I have been reading you from the day 373 onwards and now you are on day 2500 something – I keep all the newspapers, everything you have written… Now that I am on the farm taking care of horses and other animals, we cannot find the newspaper here but thank God my neighbours buy YENIDUZEN and keep them for me so I can follow...`
She invites me to go to the farm and visit her, to look at her goats and horses… She is over 70 years old and gives her blessing to me over the phone… As a retired nurse, we had spoken only once some years ago and now she calls to say how happy she is for me to receive such an important prize…
The messages over the phone are also touching, particularly one from Larnaka: One of my readers, Kyriacos whom I never managed to meet but who always sends me messages that help me to carry on says `You make darkness brighter…` and his words stay with me for the rest of the week… Perhaps these are the `little` `big` things that make me happy most…
More important more calls come for asking me to go so they can show some possible burial sites…
One of these calls come from Sinda, a village in Mesaoria… Sinda is close to Lysi and the old man who calls me from Sinda wants me to go there so he can show me two possible burial sites… I call the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to arrange to go there and meet the old man…
The old man though having a relative `missing` from 1964 has helped us to find the burial sites of Greek Cypriots `missing` from the area… One of my Greek Cypriot readers had helped to find where his relative had been buried outside Lysi together with two other Turkish Cypriots…
We go and meet him and drive outside Sinda, close to the `Cave of the Horses` where executions of some Greek Cypriot `missing` had taken place… But his story is not about the `Cave of the Horses` - two soldiers hiding in this area were caught and killed, he explains and were put in a well in this area… We go with Xenophon Kallis, Murat Soysal and Okan Oktay, officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to investigate this possible burial site…
Then the old man wants us to show another spot – this is on the road between Kondea and Sinda – in this area others also showed some wells as possible burial sites but nothing was found… The old man shows us a well and tells us the story of the two or three shepherds from Lysi who were trying to leave in 1974 – that they had a big flock of sheep and some Turkish Cypriots, in order to steal the flock killed them and buried them in a well… That one of the Greek Cypriot shepherds wanted water and took water from the well and before he could drink it he was shot and killed and together with the other two shepherds buried in the well…
The whole area has such a quiet beauty – Mesaoria is like that, always… It stretches out with a flat beauty, here and there some eucalyptus trees, the land so green now after a few rains, occasionally a small house – two storey – as they used to build them in the past… The top room that had windows open on all sides to allow winds coming from any side… Tiny houses of Mesaoria that are disappearing now…
We thank the old man and go to his house for coffee… His wife had been a seamstress and she shows us the photograph from her wedding – she had sewn her own wedding dress, elaborate with chiffon and ribbons, spread out at the studio to show how nice the skirt is… She has curtains in the kitchen dating back a hundred years old perhaps from the silk her mother had woven and she had embroidered these curtains from that silk… She has her diploma on the wall – she had attended a school of sewing in Vatyli – two Turkish Cypriot sisters had opened a school there for teaching how to become a seamstress and they would sew dresses and wedding gowns and slowly learn to become a seamstress…
We drink our coffee and say our goodbyes to the old man and his wife and head for Famagusta – Varosha actually, the part that is `open` and settled by those who came from Paphos… We go to find Sema Kilinch who shows us the area where she and others thought had been a mass grave… She lives close to Leyla Kiralp and I call Leyla to come out so we can see her…
The possible burial site that both Sema and Leyla are talking about is in the middle of the road – previously there had been no road here, it was just fields and gardens… Next to the road is a garden surrounded by a stone wall – when they were first settled here, there had been a very bad stench coming from the garden – there had been rumours that some Greek Cypriots had been buried there… We are in Agia Paraskevi area of Varosha – previously I had shown this area together with Leyla and now Sema is also showing these possible burial sites… We hope this will help the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to make deeper investigations in this area and see if people who lived in Agia Paraskevi could also help in case they might remember something…
I thank everyone who is trying to help in this humanitarian task of trying to find out the unspoken truths of our past – they are the ones who `make darkness brighter…`
29.12.2014
Photo:View from the garden with stone walls and barbed wire...
(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 11th of January 2015, Sunday.
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