Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Some years ago, one of my readers had sent me an article to publish on the first anniversary of his father's death… I had found it very touching and had published it in YENIDUZEN on my page called "Cyprus: The Untold Stories" – this was back in 2008…
I had found her article very touching since it related not only to her father but some other old Cypriots I knew who had become miserable and sad after they had had to become refugees, moving from the southern part of the island to the northern part back in 1974… Being a refugee was not a new thing for Turkish Cypriots since many had become refugees back in 1963… But perhaps 1974 was a bit different from 1963 – I remember my uncle from Limassol who was living in the Chiftlikoudi area with his family and he had to emigrate to Kyrenia… He was given a house of a Greek Cypriot in Kara Koumi, Kyrenia with no furniture, nothing in it. By the time the refugees from the southern part of the island came to the northern part to resettle, many Greek Cypriot houses would be looted and nothing would remain…
My uncle Saffet would struggle to find beds to sleep in, cups to drink tea from, plates to eat from, chairs to sit on…
A kind of sadness would fall on him and he would never recover from that sadness and he would die, heartbroken…
My reader's father had had a similar, dramatic trauma when he had to leave his beautiful village Falia and come to the northern part of the island to live…
Let me share today the article of my reader Hulya with you… Her sister called me the other night and asked me to find the article we had published because they wanted to share it on FACEBOOK and that's when I searched old files to find it and thought of translating it so that I could also share it with you…
Here's Hulya's article:
"The village Falia is a mountain village in Paphos, what they used to call where `birds don't fly, caravans don't pass…"
Huseyin Makri had been born in this village and had spent his youth and the best years of his life there – he had stayed in the same village, the child of a populous family… Although he had not been educated much, he knew how to calculate and he could follow events in the world and express his own opinions…
Just like his father, he would have a populous family, thinking that "We can sell land piece by piece and educate them…" He would see his children as the biggest treasure he had… He would work in agriculture, he would be a quilt-maker, he would be a "kahveci" (coffee shop owner), he would work in the mines and work in all sorts of places in order to bring bread to his family so they would not need anything from anyone…
Unfortunately, WAR happened… That damned war took everything away from him… Just like most of the Cypriots he would have to leave his daily routine, his property, his land, his gardens…
And that's when things changed dramatically… Just as it happened to most of Turkish Cypriots, time would stop, life would stop…
Emigration to the northern part of the island would clutter his family, his house and his future…
Now he was in a new town, in a sunbrick house with looted armchairs and he would have to live there… Feeling an alien to this place, he did not even have a single planted tree of his own…
He was above 50 years old and his children were almost approaching the time of their lives when they would get married.
What would happen to his children? How would they survive? What sort of job would he do?
His questions grew and grew… He could not find answers to any of his questions and he would never be able to find those answers…
Huseyin Makri was no longer the bold, strong guy when earth would shake when he walked… He would start seeing himself as good for nothing… He could not stay like that, he had to go back to his village… In a few years' time, he thought, things would settle down and he could go back to his village. His transistor radio would always be stuck to his ear following the news and he was almost sure that "America would solve this problem…"
He didn't have to adapt to the new order of things… He did not believe in the new administration or those who would come after them. Although many people got lots of land and property, they were asking him to give back the property that was passed on to him from his father. HE DID NOT GIVE THOSE! He did not belong here and he would not be part of this place…
He was looking for some sort of support in order to wait… And he found that… That lemon tree would share everything with him. He would lean on the lemon tree in winter and summer and talk to the tree… He would wait a whole lot of 30 years!...
Huseyin Makri loved his country and had struggled for his country. In the Turkish Cypriot underground organisation, he had taken important tasks under the name "Sakallı" ("One with a beard"). But in the northern part where he came to live as a refugee, no one would remember that. No one supported him, except that lemon tree…
He never went out on strolls or on trips. He only went to the Department of Reallocation of Land in Nicosia to talk about his problems…
He could never overcome the traumas he had been through… He stopped speaking to his children, to his wife, to his friends… He built huge, solid walls between himself and others that no one could pass. He never allowed anyone to love him. He lived like a grumpy old man… He managed to create a world consisting of only one person: Only himself. He always watched his family from afar… Apart from giving money during the Bayram festive holidays to his grandchildren, he gave them advice to study…
When checkpoints opened, he went back to his village but he could not recognize the village he dreamed of…
He always voted for the right wing political parties but he never believed that they would change anything…
He had a battery in his heart and despite his battery, he resisted… He outlived his faithful friends…
During his last days, his children and his wife did not leave him alone… 30 years of longing were over but he was not aware of that…
Huseyin Makri died on the 25th of February 2007 when he was 86 years old…
He was actually a "missing person" who was alive – a "missing person" whose name was not on "The Official List of Missing Persons"!... His address was known; his address was under the lemon tree on the corner…
We lived with our longing for him, he never allowed us to love him. But he loved us all, I know that.
Huseyin Makri was our father…
Now only that lemon tree remains from him for us, the lemon tree that he is no longer sitting under…
We don't want that lemon tree to dry up, to die… We water it…
We don't want war, we don't want people to become refugees, we don't want fathers to grow old under trees… This is our wish…
We commemorate him with longing and love on his anniversary…
His Daughter: Hulya…"
26.2.2016
Photo: Huseyin Makri with his angoni…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 27th of March 2016, Sunday.
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