Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Dr. Dervish Ozer, whose real stories based on life I have published here occasionally, sits down and writes a series of stories on `rape` during the times of war in Cyprus. We create a `Folder of rapes` and I start publishing it on my page called `Cyprus: The Untold Stories` in the YENIDUZEN newspaper. We decide to publish the `Rape Files` for five days – he has more stories though but we choose the most relevant ones in connection with `the Cyprus conflict`.
`Years have taught me that there are no limits to rape` he writes. `Being always together with women as a gynaecologist, listening to their pain and having seen the war, I have witnessed to the kinds of rape inflicted on women…` he continues.
Dr. Dervish Ozer says:
`They have told me stories and I have listened. I will try to tell all their stories… You might say why tell it again, why scratch the wound? And to this I will answer you with the words of a German lawyer, Bernhard Schlink: `Even though we cannot hold responsible the new generations for what has happened in the past, there is a place where old crimes are passed over to the new generations. If members of a society do not bring out the crimes committed in the past out into the open and accept these, if they embrace the perpetrators from their own community and protect them, then they become partners in those crimes. The crimes will be waiting for the new generations until such time that the community accepts this and denounces those crimes. Cleansing themselves of those crimes can only be possible then…`
Dr. Dervish goes on to tell of the rape of a 23 year old girl by a father and a son, how the father taught his 15 year old son to rape…
He goes on to tell another story from Mesaoria where two men argue about raping a woman and how it all comes out years later when one accuses the other of raping a dead woman: He had killed the woman after he had raped her and told his friend that `She is still warm, you can do it…`
He continues to tell stories of harassment and rape within the communities, one of the stories entitled `On those hot summer nights, I had to sleep behind closed windows…` and the title of the other story is `In those times of war I have seen rape coming not only from the enemy but from friends as well…`
The fourth story is entitled `The child born out of rape…` and draws on the fact that there had been a lot of rapes and many young girls were sent back for abortion – somehow one of them gives birth to a child born out of rape and Dr. Dervish tells the feelings of that young girl…
The fifth story is again based on a real story from Mesaoria and is entitled `Years later I saw his photo in newspapers, he was a teacher…`
What Dr. Dervish does is engage himself with dealing with our history, our past, the things that people kept silent about, the things that we should all know in order to re-evaluate ourselves… `What is our place in the world? What have we done to ourselves and to each other? What is this bloody past? What is this history not taught in schools? What went on and why people fell silent? Why these things still not discussed publicly?` Perhaps these are the questions haunting Dr. Dervish and he continues to write and we continue to speak…
There is very few writers who are dealing with the past, engaging themselves to reengage us with dealing with the truth in Cyprus… The mass majority of writers in Cyprus from either community prefers to tell stories of how their own community was a `victim` and very few would go out of their ways to tell stories about how some members of our communities were both `victims` and `perpetrators` - Dr. Dervish does precisely that, not taking the comfortable `side` of his own community but writing about both… The mass majority of writers in Cyprus don't even think about `the other community` - subconsciously it is absent from their narrative, it is all about `us` and how we paid a huge price and how we were victimized and how sorry everyone should feel about us… But for Dr. Dervish nothing is about `us` - all is about `us and them` together, it is about human nature and while some committed crimes how others just watched or how others reacted or how
others tried to save and all in all how we as the two main communities have failed to save each other from so much misery and suffering… He does not just `register` what has happened but tries to capture the feelings of those who have as a result of these crimes suffered: He writes from the mouth of a dead woman or a raped woman or a mother who is giving birth to a child out of rape… He tries to capture the human feeling, the human soul because he is suffering all these years from witnessing all those crimes as a 10 year old kid from Mesaoria and only perhaps by writing these, he can heal his soul… As a 10 year old kid in 1974, he ran among the dead, he listened to stories of the elderly in the coffee shops, he saw how a house was bombed and how his mother would be wounded, losing some of her fingers, swearing at that small age to his mother that he will become a doctor to treat her… And he would become a doctor but more than a doctor through
his writing he is trying to treat our wounds of the past, trying to help us to face our history, trying to heal our souls from the crimes that have become ghosts haunting us…
He writes about the `banality of evil` as in the words of Hannah Arendt – the indifference of perpetrators… In fact I met one of those perpetrators whose indifference would freeze the blood in my veins…
`It was war time` he told me, `in war there is no shame… There is no such thing as honour…`
He had been part of the rapes and killings and had only agreed to speak to me after months of communication with one of his close friends – his friend had convinced him that it was okay to meet with me. This was years ago, probably more than 10 years ago…
I would realize with a shock that he did not know how to read and write, this illiterate man who had gone and killed and raped – he knew those things but did not know how to read and write.
I had shown him the photo of a young boy `missing` from Aphania, trying to figure out where he had been buried… And why they had killed such a young boy, innocent, had nothing to do with any conflict whatsoever…
When I showed him the photo with the name underneath, he could not read and told me so… That he didn't know how to read and write…
He would tell me where they had buried those they had killed from the Aphania area… Later I would tell the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee officials about the burial sites he had told me… Years later they would do exhumations at Ornithi and some other spots and find the remains of some `missing` Greek Cypriots to be given to their relatives for burial…
I would ask him about the rape of a middle aged woman, not able to walk and blind… He would simply laugh and say `There is no honour during times of war, no such thing!`
No regrets, nothing… No feeling… No shame… That must be what is called `the banality of evil`… Just simple `evil` looking me in the eye, sitting in front of me, talking to me as though talking of weather… A black hole among humans…
At the end of our long conversation, he would grab my arm and threaten me that if ever I would disclose his identity, he would come after me…
At night I would sit and think about him – instead of a soul it would be as though he had a black hole inside him… Not human, I would think… Something less than human, something so empty that it is difficult to imagine such a living person with no soul attached to life…
He is still out there, leading his life like so many others from both communities, comfortable in their knowledge of having some sort of `immunity` - they are the `untouchables` since both our communities protect them and they have nothing to `fear`, immersed in their own `banality`, reflecting also the `banality` of our communities for choosing to be silent about all of them… They are not accountable for what they have done since both communities have given them protection by staying silent – staying silent as in the words of Bernhard Schlink, is becoming partners in those crimes…
Dr. Dervish is breaking that silence about the `banality` of such evil, going out of his way to reflect a mirror to our tainted past and the perpetrators who have tainted it… His struggle touches many hearts – many readers tell me of their `shock` in reading the dossier on rapes written by Dr. Dervish… He is connecting our present with our past through telling us about traumatic experiences that's hidden in our history… Because Dr. Dervish does not want to become a partner in those crimes – that's why he is breaking the silence…
13.6.2015
Photo: Painting by Nilgun Güney for the "Color of Truth" exhibition…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 12th of July 2015, Sunday.
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