Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436
The story of the six month old Andreas found in a mass grave at Trachoni together with his mother, three aunts and his grandmother really scorches the hearts of my readers… I had been there when baby Andreas had been found in a mass grave in Trachoni – we were coming back from showing a possible burial site to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and had stopped at Trachoni where exhumations were continuing…
The archaeologists who had been working there were devastated because of the finding of the remains of little Andreas…
Having translated the article of Vassos Vasiliou from Phileleftheros last week about the planned funeral of little Andreas and his family, my readers find out that he had been buried with his pacifier… It is a great shock to learn the details of his killing and quite unacceptable for my Turkish Cypriot readers at the YENIDUZEN newspaper… I receive many messages, telling me how their heart revolted to such news…
One of my readers in his note to me says:
`Dear Sevgul, I was devastated with this news today… It is impossible to be human and not feel sad with such news… How could we become so violent? Didn't that soldier have any wits or any conscience? Wasn't he human? Didn't he have a commander to tell him that what he is doing is wrong? How can these be done to innocent people?...`
Another reader sends another note:
`War is the dirtiest game of the grown-ups… Children die in this game where even the winners lose…`
And another reader thanks me for sharing the story of little Andreas… He lives in Trachoni and he is shocked to find out that such terrible crimes have happened in this village… `What terrible crimes have happened in Trachoni… Thanks Sevgul for telling us` he writes…
Sami Ozuslu, one of the journalists in YENIDUZEN and the director of SIM TV writes an article about little Andreas… The title of his article is `Lament to the six month old baby…` He says:
`Your name was Andreas, you little baby…
That's what the newspapers said…
If you lived, you would have been 41 years old now…
Who knows how you would turn out.
Would you be tall or short?
Would your eyes be green or brown?
We don't know any of this…
You never lived!...
***
They say you had your pacifier in your mouth.
You under the soil with your mother and your aunts… All of you together there… In darkness… No one knew… No one could know… For a whole 40 years you had been `missing`. They even made you `missing`! Our humanity is `missing`… We are all `missing`…
***
Andreas you had only been six months old…
Maybe in that short life of yours you only said `Aghuuu`…
You might have cried a lot, when you had been hungry or when you had a tummy ache…
But you could not utter any other word in this life…
They did not allow you, they did not let you to say your words…
Probably they could not look at your face as they were burying you in the `mass grave…`
Probably they couldn't look in your face…
How can any `human` look at the innocent face of a baby as they become its murderer?
And now we cannot look at your face Andreas…
***
Who knows what sort of a human being you would turn out to be if you had lived…
What sort of games would you play as a child?
Lingiri or the long donkey?
In those times these were the most popular games Andreas…
And pirilli…
You would have probably liked all of it…
And you would like the balls…
And you would like the spinner…
They did not allow you to live your childhood…
***
How many girls would you make fall in love with you in your youth?
And how many times would Eros would knock on the door of your heart?
How would you recover from your adolesence full of tension with acne on your face?
With whom would you be friends and with whom would you have rifts during breaks at school?
Would you like mathematics or literature?
Would you go and study at the university or would you be a farmer in the village?
Would you aim to be rich in life or would you run after your ideals, wherever your heart would take you to?
Would you get married and have kids?
Would you love kids?
They did not allow you to love Andreas!...
***
Your name was Andreas, you little baby…
Your name could have been Ali or Ayshe or Panayiotis…
What difference does a name make?
Which baby knows its name with its pacifier in its mouth?
Which baby is aware about where it's born, which colour it is, its nationality, religion, beliefs?
And which baby deserves to die with its pacifier in its mouth, without having said `Mama`, without crawling, without taking its first step, without its first teeth coming out and without getting to know its environment?
Which conscience can give its okay for such a murder, which heart can survive such pain?
***
Your name was Andreas, you little baby…
The baby who could not grow up…
The baby who was not allowed to grow up…
That there was not even a photo of yours left behind…
Thank God that you don't have a photo Andreas…
If there was, how would we look at your face?
Thanks heavens that you don't have a photograph!`
Cyprus has become a mass grave for babies, youngsters, men and women, old people… The violence of humans on this land has had no limits: They have killed even six month old babies without a flinch…
As we sit down under cloudy skies with our group `Together We Can`, the bi-communal group of relatives of `missing persons` and victims of war, the subject turns eventually towards little Andreas…
One of our members, Erbay Akansoy, whose relatives were killed in Maratha in 1974 says, `Some people have said to me that babies were also killed in Maratha… But it is not appropriate to try to make a comparison like this… A baby has been killed. There is no pretext to killing a baby… The person who killed the baby is a killer… That's it…`
What he means actually is not to try to make `comparisons` and try to `measure out` or `weigh` the devastation…
A baby has died… A baby was killed… A six month old baby who could not live and grow and sit with us now, be amongst us to enjoy life…
And whoever killed the baby is a baby killer… Whether in Cyprus or Afghanistan or Iraq or Northern Ireland, whether in Trachoni or Maratha, a baby killer is a killer. No excuse. No pretext.
When Christina from our group had posted something on Facebook about Maratha recently, one Greek Cypriot reacted and claimed that `They were to blame because they did something…`
So Christina answered this person, `Who did? These children and babies? What could they do?`
Little Andreas and all the other little babies who have been killed in Cyprus are creating waves when news is coming out about the details of their death: They open a path for us to become human again, to try to feel the devastation of war, to try to see how inhuman things get when there is a war and to try to learn from this…
Little Andreas is teaching us a lesson of humanity because of his age…
3.10.2015
Photo: Digging at Trachoni in October 2011...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 11th of October 2015, Sunday.
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