Sevgul Uludag
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My first encounter with the refugee children was in Nicosia in the backyard of the library where my mother was working… It must have been the early winter of 1964 – all of a sudden, there came Turkish Cypriot refugees from Paphos and were settled temporarily in some empty buildings in the backyard of the library… The library building itself had been a `konachi` once upon a time so the buildings in the backyard must have been for the servants of the pasha… Spending all my time in the library as a child from the age of three, I started playing with the refugee children in this old `konatchi` (`palace`) which had a dark cellar, winding stairs, gilded mirrors and toilets outside as it used to be in the old days…
It also had a water reservoir and taps in the backyard for washing up – it had no shower or bathroom so the refugees would create a bath in one spot in the backyard – a makeshift room with lamarina – in order to be able to wash themselves…
They had brought their weaving machines from Paphos and I would sit and watch the refugee women weaving clothes – an old woman would be using a sheave to wind thread out of wool and I would watch them using a hand mill of stone to grind cereals…
I had made friends with a wonderful refugee child from Paphos, Melahat – she had blond hair and blue eyes and was very thin and we would play for hours with her…
In the backyard of the library an aid office for refugees had been opened and together with Melahat we would go and watch the chubby elderly guy in charge distributing the aid that would arrive from abroad… There were big bundles of raffia ribbons, clothing and even a fur coat… Someone who donated these must have been very imaginative: What would a refugee do with the bundles of raffia ribbons? They needed food and shelter and a decent life…
Food was rationed in those days, not just for refugees but for almost everybody… Not far from the library was another office for rationing food and petrol. There was no petrol I remember, you were only allocated so many gallons of petrol per month so my mother and I would have to walk home instead of using our old Volkswagen… The food they distributed for refugees were made up of canned food, some sugar and flour and lentils I remember…
But in those days Melahat and I did not have such things on our minds – as 5-6 year old kids, our biggest worry was to grow up quickly, to start school, to play games… The elementary school I was going was not far from the library which was in the very centre of the walled city of Nicosia. My school was in the Arabahmet area around Victoria Street and was actually a makeshift school: It was sort of `created` for the children of the refugees and the Arabahmet area… It was next to the famous Pavlides' garage and here in this building, I would learn to read and write, to count, to recite poetry, to dance with the music of Strauss, to sing songs and learn to play melodica… We had an orchestra and a chorus – there were very few rich children at our school – our school was a school for children who were poor or who were refugees… There was a rectangular yard of the school and the road passing in front of the Pavlides' garage – we would have
our PT lessons in the street because there was nowhere else to do this! My white shorts would get dirty from the asphalt but still this was no issue for any of us: All we thought of were the new games or the next school gathering for parents at the end of the year where we would be distributed roasted chick peas and a bottle of Belkola – we would throw the roasted chick peas covered with salt in the cola and listen to the noise it made! We were one big family of kids who came from poverty but poverty was not a sin, nor was it something to be ashamed of – you just learned to live with it although poverty would steal a lot of our childhood dreams…
And we had wonderful teachers – one teacher I remember prepared us to dance as butterflies with the music of Strauss… We had yellow chiffon wings that our mothers would sew on our dancing costumes… Our music teacher Nesrin would play songs with her accordion in class and our headmaster Fikri Karayel would choose five-six of us to go to private lessons in his house in the afternoons in our last year in order to prepare us for the English College exams for free – all of us whom the headmaster had prepared voluntarily would pass the exams with flying colours…
The English College was created after the intercommunal conflict in 1963 and was a school very much like The English School – because of lack of safety – people were `disappearing` from the streets – some of those Turkish Cypriot students who had been students of The English School could no longer go there for safety reasons… So The English College was created and this was a school that prepared students for the GCEs… It was an expensive school because all the books were imported from England and I remember my mother struggling to pay for those school textbooks…
After some time, a refugee village was built for the refugee families and my refugee friends from the library backyard moved into tiny refugee houses not far from Ortakeuy. We were growing up and moving to secondary schools and while I lost contact with most of the kids from that era, few of them in fact were in my class at The English College. Melahat with her family I heard, moved to Australia… Papatya from my class also moved as a refugee to Australia…
The English College would undergo another big change in 1974 – more refugee children would come to our school from Larnaka and Limassol and Paphos and gradually the name of the school would be changed to `Turk Maarif Koleji` (`Turkish Education College`) and it would lose its essence of being an `English school` - now students would not only prepare for GCEs but also for the university entry exams of Turkey so students would have to take more lessons in Turkish… During the time of The English College, teachers for French would come from France, teachers for various other subjects would come from England but gradually this would be wiped out and the school would acquire a different character than when it started off…
At The English College, the atmosphere would be a bit different from the Arabahmet Elementary School… We would have more `rich kids` in our school as well as children of refugees from all over the island. Here, I would be in the same class with Neshe Yashin, our famous poet with whom we would spend time outside school as well in the library or in her father's bookshop… Neshe too was a refugee child from Peristerona… Neshe's father, another famous Turkish Cypriot poet of those times, Ozker Yashin would publish a newspaper and write about the problems of the refugees… A refugee himself from Peristerona, he would be the spokesperson for the Turkish Cypriot refugees… Years later Neshe would visit her village and some Greek Cypriots would give her plates that had belonged to her mother and she would see and recognize some of the furniture that belonged to her mother… Their house had been looted…
As young students we would go around old Nicosia, write notes in class to each other, spend time in the library and Neshe would write poems… After 1974 she would write her most famous poem that would leave a mark on our hearts and souls: Which part shall I love?
`One should love one's homeland
So says my father
But my homeland is divided into two
Which part should I love?`
28.3.2015
Photo: Neshe Yashin
(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 26th of April 2015, Sunday.
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