Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
We sit at the cafe of Home for Cooperation in Nicosia, on the Green Line, having Cypriot coffee, sketto – no sugar. We sit across the wooden table facing each other on wooden chairs… The air is stifling, hot… We have just come back from a funeral and we don't want to leave each other just yet – she has suggested to sit and have coffee so we sit there, not really knowing what to do, Christina and me…
Between us is the lake of Galatia while we drink our coffee – the lake that knows too much but says little and keeps its secrets hidden way below… The lake where some remains have been found one day before, the lake that we visited many times before, showing possible burial sites…
The lake where Christina's father and brother might have been buried though we don't know for certain… They were the taken to Galatia as prisoners of war from Komikebir back in 1974 and they never returned… After the discovery of the mass graves in Maratha-Sandallaris and Aloa created by some groups of EOKA-B, there started a `killing spree` and the Greek Cypriot prisoners in Galatia had paid `the price` for the sins of EOKA-B – not that this can ever be `justified` but that had been the `trigger` for `revenge`… Among those who had been killed was the young judge Takis Hadjinikolaou from Yialousa – he too had been taken as a prisoner and was in Galatia and his remains would be found in the lake in a mass grave of 11 Greek Cypriot `missing persons`.
Today we have gone to the funeral of the wife of Takis Hadjinikolaou, Agni who had passed away at the age of 80… We have gone to the funeral together with Christina and we sit at the Home for Cooperation drinking coffee and again talking about the lake of Galatia… We drink coffee, the lake Galatia between us…
The remains have been found in an area where we had gone together with Christina and Louis - we had driven on a road overlooking the lake where a witness whom Louis had found had told us roughly where there might be some possible burial sites. We had gone together with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee later on in July 2010, exactly five years ago and now we hear that some remains had been found where the witness that Louis had found had told us there should be some remains there…
Louis is the son of Andreas Pavlos Loizou known as the `Rich man of Komikebir` who is also `missing` like the father and brother of Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia. Five years ago Louis had come with us to investigate his `missing` father. He had been one of the richest men in Karpasia and was very generous. Almost two meters high, he loved life, working, having fun, going around. He had married Sofoulla from Varoshi whose family owned the Florida Hotel. I would meet her too later on, with her blue eyes, white hair and smiling face, she would greet me in her little refugee house in Pallouriotissa. In all seasons at least 60-70 people worked for Christina's father Pavlos, most of them Turkish Cypriots from Komikebir, Kritya (Kilitkaya) and Livadya... He would be arrested in 1974 and brought to Galatia. He would be the last person in prison in Galatia together with his son, Christina's brother...
The father of Louis, Andreas Pavlos Loizou would be sent to Nicosia to be exchanged as a prisoner of war but he would want to go back to Komikebir and then back in Karpasia, they would make him `missing`... Some of my readers had shown a palloura between Livadhia and Galatia, claiming the father of Louis had been buried there... We had shown this place to the CMP but despite excavations nothing was found. My reader would claim that they should have dug further up so we need to go again to see the palloura and check what my reader is saying...
We feel relieved with Christina that remains have been found in the lake... A team of excavators of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee has been digging in the lake on and off for many years and this time some remains have been found...
Christina found some more information about Galatia and we need to clear that up as well... According to some new information she found in her investigations, a Greek Cypriot was hired with his bulldozer to work on the new asphalt road they were building after 1974 from the main Famagusta-Karpaz road to Galatia – that is the main road of Galatia... While straightening a bend from the old road, there came out some human remains... Although they had promised to pay this Greek Cypriot for his work with his shiro (bulldozer), they never did... I actually have an idea about who this bulldozer operator might be and I tell Christina the name and now she makes some calls and finds out that in fact it is him. We make plans on how to go about it... We call the Coordinator of Exhumations of the CMP, Okan Oktay and tell him about this new information and what we are about to do with Christina... He thanks us...
We had actually planned to go to Galatia today but the best laid plans can always change – one of my readers had found a witness from 1974 and we had been arranging to go and meet him – we already postponed this twice. This time just one day before we left for Galatia, Agni Hadjinikolaou passed away and we decided to postpone going to Galatia again and instead go to the funeral together and lay some flowers for Agni...
Agni had been a wonderful woman from the island Lefkada in Greece – she had got married with the young judge Takis Hadjinikolaou and settled in Cyprus – they would have two sons, Spyros and Panos... When her husband was taken prisoner from the coffee shop of Yialousa in 1974 and taken to Galatia and then `disappeared` she would devote all her life for finding information about her husband's disappearance as well as working for other `missing persons`. She would be demonstrating at the Ledra Palace checkpoint with her husband's photograph and together with other women in black, she would visit different cities like London, Brussels, New York in order to campaign for the finding of the fate of `missing persons`.
I had met her years ago, before the checkpoints had opened in a meeting at the Ledra Palace Hotel... Through my friend Magda Zenon, I had already met Spyros Hadjinikolaou, her son whom I had interviewed back in 2001. We had begun working on his father's disappearance and it would take us about five years to learn all the facts and the place of the mass grave with the help of a family – my readers – from Galatia village as well as with the help of other friends from Germany, London etc.
The new witness one of my readers had found in Galatia now claims that after 1974, they had been given the order to open a mass grave, take out the remains and fill them in bags and leave them by the side of the road in Galatia – that someone would pick them up later, that they should just go home and not think about it. What was the reason for this? According to the witness, they were given this order `because of the judge` Takis Hadjinikolaou but they had dug the wrong mass grave and had taken out the wrong remains... Since they were not the ones to bury Takis Hadjinikolaou there, they dug another place, not far from the mass grave where Takis Hadjinikolaou had been buried together with others. `There had been a campaign by his family internationally, that's why they wanted to find and get rid of the remains of the judge` he would tell my reader.
Incidentally we couldn't go to meet him because the wife of the judge Takis Hadjinikolaou, Agni Hadjinikolaou passed away. Instead we went to her funeral, may she rest in peace now...
But we plan to go together with Christina to meet this new witness from Galatia, perhaps next week if our best laid plans don't get disturbed again... Until we find all the secrets of Galatia and its lake, we will continue to go with Christina to find out all the details...
20.6.2015
Photo: The late Agni Hadjinikolaou
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 5th of July 2015, Sunday.
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