Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
It is over a long conversation over the phone with Katerina Antona that triggers the whole thing…
She had her brother `missing` and she had gone to Mora and other villages back in 2003 after the checkpoints were opened, together with our journalist friend Andreas Paraschos.
In one of these villages she had met a shepherd who had been helpful… And who had known a lot…
She is wondering whether the guy with the bulldozer from Mora who would bury those killed in the war afterwards is still alive.
What we are looking for is the truck of Faschas – another `missing` person and together with him around 40 Greek Cypriot soldiers…
I promise to make investigations and a few days later, I call one of my readers from the area to ask him about the shepherd and the bulldozer operator.
The bulldozer operator has died I find out…
But the shepherd is alive and what is more, he is the father of my reader! I can't believe my ears and I am so happy and Katerina too would be very happy to hear that. Because some years ago as she was looking for the shepherd, someone in the village who claimed to be the son had told her that he had passed away… Now it turns out that this was a lie – perhaps it was a way to tell her to stay off the area…
Some people did this to her from both sides… As she was going and searching for information and trying to pass this on to the Committee in those days, one civilian police would tell her `Not to go and not to ask questions` in the Turkish Cypriot side!
If the information she had given at that time had been truly evaluated, the bulldozer guy would have been found to help out to find more remains… But no one wanted to hear what Katerina found out so the information sat there, untouched, unscratched, unsolved… The bulldozer guy has died but at least we have the shepherd alive!
Katerina is so happy; she too cannot believe her ears…
`But that day at the village, when one person claiming to be the son told me that he had passed away, I had cried…`
Now, she can smile!
Very quickly I make arrangements with my reader to meet me and the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and to bring his father with him and see if he can point out the possible burial site of the truck and the convoy of the `missing` Greek Cypriots from 1974 from this area…
The only way we can meet them is on a Saturday afternoon and we go on the 23rd of January 2016, a very cold, chilly day with showers…
Xenophon Kallis from the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee comes with us, as well as a new Turkish Cypriot investigator and a Turkish Cypriot archaeologist who had been in the excavations in the area so she knows what has been dug and what has not…
We meet my reader with his father…
Soon it becomes clear that it was him, this old shepherd who had shown various burial sites in this area of Mora where the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, in various burial sites found a total of 12 `missing` persons.
He wants to help… Because he has a human heart… When we were going around showing various possible burial sites with my reader – that is his son – the information had come through him! Still there are some possible burial sites we had shown with his son that have not been dug yet… We stand in the field in the cold and talk about these…
Then he shows us the location as he remembers of the truck of Faschas…
`But you won't find many remains` he says… `Because over there, the tanks had bombed this truck and this truck was full of bombs and when the bombs exploded, the soldiers on the truck died too…`
`Even if small remains like teeth are found, still it might give DNA… So it's important to know where the remains from the truck had been buried…`
He points out the location of the truck that was bombed… He remembers it stood there for some time so everyone passing by saw it…
This is on the side of the road going from Tymbou (Ercan airport) towards Aphania… It is near the Chomlekchi Chiftlighi – The Chomlekchi Farm…
The old shepherd who took us here remembers Katerina… I give her regards to him…
`She had a brother or a husband missing` he says…
`Her brother was missing but his remains were found in a well in Agia Kepir… Together with others…`
We have parked the cars near the road and walked in mud in a field…
We take photos, coordinates…
No, the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee has never dug here, they have dug to the left and to the right of this field but not this field… The archaeologist who is with us confirms that they definitely did not dig this field. They dug the ones around but not this one…
`They were buried on the surface` the old shepherd says…
Further up, we had shown another possible burial site… The two sides of the road were dug with nothing found… But the road has not been dug…
The road in 1974 and this road is different – Katerina too has information from a Turkish Cypriot whom she had met together with Andreas Paraschos back in the time when the checkpoints had opened…
This Turkish Cypriot who had been an official of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had told her that they know `They are buried under the road…`
He had promised her that they would dig under the road but this has not been done yet…
The cold afternoon, the cool open skies with some clouds on the horizon, the sprinkling rain drops, the muddy fields, the silence…
Shall we be able to reach them, the `missing` Greek Cypriots from the convoy here this time?
Or shall we have to work more and more and more until we find what has remained of them?
I want to thank Katerina Antona for starting this process of finding the Turkish Cypriot shepherd… I want to thank my reader who came with us and brought his father with him to show us the possible burial site in the field outside Mora… I want to thank the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee for coming with us to show them the possible burial site… Those of you who have any information about this area, please share with us, with or without your name… My phone number is 99 966518… This, we do for humanity…
6/2/2016
Photo: The field in Mora…
(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 13th of March, 2016 Sunday.
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