Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
On the 22nd of July 2015, Wednesday, I go to the Nicosia Cemetery to attend the funeral of the `missing` Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo and to meet his relatives… He had gone `missing` on the 22nd of July 1974 from Polis and this is the 41st anniversary as his remains are being returned to his family for burial and the last goodbyes… I am happy that with the help of my readers, we managed to find his burial site – he had been buried together with two other `missing` Turkish Cypriots from Polis from 1974, behind a monument at the entrance of Polis. With the help of one of my readers, I had found the person who had buried them and he came with us to show the exact location because previously the exhumation teams of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had been digging for over a year with no results… Shevket Rado, an old man whose health is fragile comes with us and shows us not only the burial site of the three `missing` Turkish Cypriots whom he
had helped to bury at the order of some Greek Cypriot officials back in 1974, but also a fourth `missing` Turkish Cypriot buried at the edge of a cemetery in Polis up on a hill…
At the funeral there are military and civilian officials, relatives of the `missing` Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo and their friends.
I go to meet his wife Adile whose tears would not stop throughout the funeral. I sit next to her as she tells me the story of her husband…
`My husband was actually from Pelathousa` she says. She is from Arodez and they would get married and settle in Pelathousa. Later on they would build a house in Polis and move there around 1957.
`My husband had been working at the Limni mines but after 1963 this was no longer possible…`
So he would become a `mucahit` (`soldier`) in Polis and serve until 1974.
They would have six kids: Hasan, Kumru, Sevim, Sezgin, Umit and Erten… In 1974 as Chatallo would go `missing`, his youngest son Erten had only been six, Umit was 12, Sezgin was 14, Sevim was 16, Kumru was 19 and Hasan was 20 years old…
As the war broke out Adile Hanim would try to find out where her husband was stationed so she could send him some food… She would go and find the Turkish Cypriot commander of Polis and tell him `Please don't put him to the front line, there are younger people… And he is a bit overweight.` The commander would not tell her where he had been stationed so she would not be able to send him food, nor see him one last time…
They had stationed him up on a hill on the road to Pelathousa but Adile Hanim would not know that…
In 1975, they would emigrate to Morphou where very difficult days awaited her…
`Even our own villagers did not help us, you wouldn't know what we suffered` she says… She would need to find a house to stay in with her kids and she would have to find work in order to feed her kids…
She would go out in the fields to work, to collect oranges and try to survive on this land with six kids and without a husband…
The most tragic thing about today is that her eldest son Hasan, would not be able to see the day his father is being buried today… He would die of a heart attack last year and this would increase the pain of the family…
While there was the first excavations in Polis, he would go there for a few days in a row with the hope that they would find the remains of his father. But on those days, the excavations would produce no results since they had been digging the wrong place.
Although we had shown the possible burial site back in 2013, the very long process of DNA tests and the return process of the remains would take us all the way up to today and the life of Hasan Algin, the son of the `missing` Chatallo, would not be long enough to see this day…
We speak of all these at the funeral with Adile Hanim who is surrounded by her daughters and sons and grandchildren… Throughout the funeral she cries and cries – she is so sad…
She has 12 grandchildren.
`Chatallo would have been so happy about that` I tell her, `This is the best news, to have a dozen angoni…`
She shows me Mehmet, the grandson who carries the same name as her `missing` husband. Her family is packed tight around her, with love and care…
I get up and go to the grave to throw three scoops of soil with the shovel to his grave and share the pain of this family…
Today in this cemetery there is the monstrous face of war, the destruction it leaves behind… No word can ever be a consolation – no one tries to say words of consolation, it would be useless. The only `happy` thing about the whole process is how we managed to find his remains and how he is being buried today in a marked grave where his angoni can come visit him when they want. His children can bring him the best flowers and in spirit be with him here…
I know perfectly well that this is a poor consolation because nothing can fill the vacuum he has left behind – Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo loved to eat and drink, loved his kids and his wife and did everything possible to provide a good life to them but war has taken him away from us and no one and nothing can fill his space…
He will always live in the hearts and minds of his wife, his children, his angoni and his friends…
The following day I get a call from a Greek Cypriot who is a neighbour of the daughter of Chatallo who currently resides in Polis. He had been at the funeral but we did not see each other so now he calls… He too tried to help to find the remains but did not manage at the time…
`After the funeral I had gone to the house in Morphou with the family and only then I found out that you were at the funeral…`
`Sorry we missed each other` I tell him…
Adile Hanim invited me to go and visit her in her house in Morphou so I will do that and we will sit and share the pain as well as smiles – our humanity would bring us closer and we will talk about Polis and Arodez and Pelathousa and the Greek Cypriot neighbour of her daughter in Polis… We will talk about the angoni and what future lies in wait for them: Whether we shall ever be to see the days when people would not kill each other for whatever reason, when people will not `disappear` from the earth, whether we shall see the days when our children and our angoni would simply enjoy living on an island with the golden sand, the blue sea, the fantastic sun and the smell of jasmine and orange groves… Where war would only be in textbooks to learn from and where no military uniform would ever have a say in their lives… Where they will be simply only Cypriots no matter which ethnicity they come from and no matter which language they speak…
25.7.2015
Photo: Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 2nd of August 2015, Sunday.
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