Sevgul Uludag
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Dr. Dervish Ozer comes from abroad for a few days and as we had agreed, we go investigating in the area of Epiho and Palekythro… We meet around noon – the weather is fantastic, the fields all green and yellow and we manage to see a few red tulips here and there… In some places purple flowers have bloomed and all over there are swallows and doves singing and busy flying: It is spring time in Cyprus, the spring time that we need to appreciate where life blooms and gives hope for better days to come even though on the ground life might look bleak at times…
We go to pick up a witness from his house, unannounced but our witness comes from a good family and he never refuses to come with us if we show up and ask him to help… He has helped find the Souppouris and Liasis families, killed by others but buried by him…
We go first somewhere in Epiho – almost a year ago, the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had been digging at a bridge in Epiho… Now in the coffee shop he heard people saying that `They have dug the wrong place` and described `the right place` for looking for four or five `missing` Greek Cypriots… So off we go together, walking in the fields and trying to locate the place they have described him…
He asked them in the coffee shop, `Why didn't you go forward and warn them that they were digging the wrong place?` and the answer was `We don't want to be involved…` So they kept quiet for a year and only now start speaking up…
It is a sort of a stream behind a mandra – the stream is called `The Cemetery Stream`… We climb up and see the broken and now disused device installed during British times, in order to stop the water from the stream and use it for irrigation…
`They had seen the bodies in this area` he says, pointing out the length of the heaps of soil stretching along the `Cemetery Stream` behind the mandra. I take photos and notes and then we walk back to the car passing through the fields full of yellow and white daisies…
We drive to Palekythro, to the mass grave where very young children, women and some men from the Souppouris and Liasis families had been buried. We stop on the road…
`The road was not like that in those days` he says, `it was a narrow dirt track…`
At the orders of the soldiers, they had taken here on a trolley behind a tractor the bodies and buried them…
It was getting dark and in those days there was a curfew in order to stop looting so they had been in a hurry to leave back to Epiho…
They had thought they had buried all but as they were leaving in a rush, they noticed that they had forgotten to bury a child – the child was in the trolley behind the tractor. So they stopped and put the child on the side of the road and a few meters further up, they got off the tractor and left in another car for their village. They were terrified in case they got caught after the curfew – so that's why they were in such a big rush…
`We put the child on the side of the dirt track between these two houses – these two houses were there` he says…
The child he is talking about is the nine year old Giannis Souppouris whose body had not been found in the mass grave. Giannis was only nine years old… Petros Souppouris at that time 10 years old and his younger brother Costas were the only ones who had survived from the Souppouris family in this massacre. Their mother Areti had been 39, their father Andreas was only 48, their aunt Thekla 45, their small brother Dimitris only 5, their small sister only 3 years old… George Liasi who had been only 13 years old too survived wounded from this massacre and had identified the killers – his sister Yianoulla would survive with heavy wounds, her two year old son having been killed. Their mother, sisters, grandmother and grandfather were also killed in this massacre. There had been 21 persons in the house of Souppouris and only Petros Souppouris who had been wounded, his brother Costas who had escaped and had hidden, George who had been wounded and Yianoulla
with heavy wounds had survived… 17 had been killed but from the mass grave remains of 16 persons had come out…
It was the first time that I had seen a mass grave in my life while it was being exhumed and this had been such a great shock for me… I had sat by the mass grave and cried, seeing how they had been thrown in the grave, the clothes of women and children, their shoes and how they lay there, life stolen from them… We had gone together with my friend, journalist Andreas Paraschos to the mass grave…
Turkish Cypriots did not know anything about the massacre at Palekythro – I would find witnesses and learn the story of what actually happened here and had written so many articles and published so many interviews about it and finally Turkish Cypriots would learn about the Palekythro massacre. Dr. Dervish Ozer wanted so much to find out about what had happened to little Yiannis Souppouris whose remains they could not find in the mass grave… It is due to his investigations that we are here today, standing on the road and looking at the mass grave and talking with the witness who had buried them… I thank my reader, Dr. Dervish Ozer who has written so many humanitarian stories about our dark history, sad stories but also funny stories based on reality – he is one of the most promising writers in Cyprus who does not take `sides` but writes humane stories of both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots… It is due to his insistence and putting his whole
heart to find out what actually happened to little, nine year old Giannis that we are here today… There are not enough words to thank him for doing this completely voluntarily as a humanitarian task…
I take photographs from the road and notes and we leave to go back on the Nicosia-Famagusta road, near Epiho… We take a left turn and stop – in this area there had been a lot of Greek Cypriot bodies who had been killed during the war – the whole area had been completely empty but now buildings have been constructed on the side of the road… We wouldn't know where they buried them – they are somewhere here all right but when people don't come forward and talk, we wouldn't find out – only accidentally as they are doing road works or waterworks or digging to build a new building the remains might come out…
We go back to Epiho – we stop at the house of our witness, thanking him for coming with us and then we go to the house of the sister of Dervish to have lunch… Afterwards we would go to his father's fields to collect some celery, broccoli, spring onions and other fresh vegetables that he grows organically… The view is amazing from Epiho – you can see the whole Pentataktilos mountain range from the field…
Perhaps one day our country will see better days and simply enjoy spring – but now we still have to continue to investigate in order to remove the darkness of the past from our lives…
7.3.2015
Photo: The missing child from Palekythro, Yannis Souppouris...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 29th of March, 2015 – Sunday.
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