Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
How many images does a mirror contain?
If this mirror had a memory and if its memory could have been recorded, we could have looked at the beautiful face of the "missing" Kakoullou now…
There isn't even a photograph left behind from her…
Kakoullou was living together with her husband Giannis Ellinas in the centre of Nicosia, near the Agia Sophia Cathedral – Selimiye Mosque, just across the second entry door of the bandabuliya – the Nicosia Municipal Market that had been built in 1932…
On the lower floor her husband Giannis had a coffeeshop and upstairs they would use the rooms as a pansion for some time…
In this house the mirror would be on a buffet in a small room…
This is a very old Cypriot mirror, inspired from the elaborate mirrors of the Venetians…
Kakoullou would probably look at this mirror and comb her hair, put on her lipstick, dress up and would be one of the best-looking women of her time…
Her family had been Greek Cypriots who had come from Anatolia and settled in Cyprus. At some point, as a young girl she had been "sold" to the Arabs but she managed to escape from Egypt to come back to Cyprus.
She was a very innovative and energetic woman…
She had accumulated some wealth and had continued to live in her house at the Agia Sophia quarters of Nicosia… At the corner of the Uray Street… This street was actually parallel to Ermou Street…
She had been the first woman to have bought a car in Cyprus and she was the first woman shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus…
Part of her family was living in Yialousa and she had built houses for her sisters there and had even built an elementary school for Yialousa called "Kakoullion Elementary School for Boys"… The school is still used as an elementary school by Turkish Cypriots living in Yialousa…
The church had given her a place for burial in return to her generosity and Kakoullou had from those days had people build a grave for her – an empty grave that stays there still today…
Because in December 1963 when the intercommunal fighting began between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, this civilian, old, almost bedridden lady, Kakoullou and her husband Giannis would be killed by some Turkish Cypriots.
My readers had told me her story years ago and I would follow it up and continue to follow it…
She had been killed in her bed downstairs and they would throw the mattress outside and her lifeless body as well. Her husband would try to jump into the Khan from the roof of the house and he would break his leg but would try to crawl to get away towards the Ermou Street… This street and this area was just on the edge of where Nicosia had been divided from 1958… But the fanatic Turkish Cypriots would run and catch him and kill him in the middle of the street…
Neighbours in the area would be terrified… How could these two innocent, civilian Greek Cypriots who harmed no one be killed so viciously in the middle of the street, just because they happened to live in the Turkish Cypriot quarter of Nicosia?
Those neighbours who were witnesses to this double murder were frightened… Two of their neighbours would take the bodies and put them in a closed van and wait for the night to fall and would take these two bodies to the Gardens of the Tekke (Tekke Bahchesi in Nicosia) to be buried… At the time, the Gardens of the Tekke had been turned into a cemetery… Not only Turkish Cypriots killed in the intercommunal fighting by some Greek Cypriots were buried here but also some Greek Cypriots killed in the Turkish Cypriot quarter of Nicosia would be buried here…
Giannis and Kakoullou Ellinas were "missing" but no one bothered to put their names on the official "Missing Persons' List".
Until we would discover their stories through our readers…
And a Greek Cypriot reader would help us to contact a close relative of Kakoullou who lived in London… When we published the story of Kakoullou in Turkish, English and Greek, we would find a close relative of Giannis Ellinas, Takis Hadjidimitriou… And he would come with us to give a DNA sample to the Genetics Institute for Giannis…
There has been digging by the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee at the Gardens of the Tekke… And they found remains of many "missing persons" there – probably mostly Turkish Cypriot "missing persons" but also some Greek Cypriot "missing persons" as well… If, as we had been told by eye witnesses, Giannis and Kakoullou Ellinas had been buried there then they would not stay in a box in the laboratory of the CMP… Chris Zachariou, the close relative of Kakoullou is coming to Cyprus in May and he will give his DNA sample for Kakoullou at the Genetics Institute.
Giannis and Kakoullou Ellinas had been killed and their house had been ransacked by some Turkish Cypriots living around their house… They would take anything and everything that would be of use to them…
Somehow the mirror of Kakoullou would stay in that small room and would be saved from this looting…
The house would remain empty for over two years and after two years, our dear friend, artist Ferah Kaya would move in here with her family. She had been a 17-year-old girl and in this house of Kakoullou, she would choose the small room upstairs as her room…
In this house, she had found a bed, a chest and a buffet on top of which stood this mirror, the mirror of Kakoullou…
Ferah Kaya would look at this mirror, would comb her hair looking at this mirror, would get dress looking at this mirror.
She had been seeing Kakoullou while going to her uncle's shop, adjacent to the house of Kakoullou and she liked the way Kakoullou would sit and smoke in front of her door… She would have a shawl over her shoulders…
Ferah would stay for two years in this small room, in the house of Kakoullou… Then she would leave to go to Turkey for university. She would never return to that small room again… She would study geography to become a geography teacher in Ankara and then would come back to Cyprus and get married. While she was gone, her family had given this mirror of Kakoullou to a relative of theirs… She no longer had the mirror…
Years would pass by and as we would be doing research on the story of Giannis and Kakoullou, I would ask Ferah to draw a picture of Kakoullou… She would draw her portrait as she remembered her and we would publish this. She would also do an oil painting of the house of Kakoullou… We would also publish that picture as well…
As Ferah Kaya was reading the stories of Kakoullou from what we were publishing, she would remember that mirror…
She would go out of her way to try to get back that mirror and she would find it and she got it back…
She would decide to give this mirror back to the family of Kakoullou and a few days ago, she would call me and tell me this.
I would go to her house and see the mirror of Kakoullou…
I would feel strange looking at that mirror, knowing that the "missing" Kakoullou also had looked at it but there is no more her reflection there but our reflection…
Now, Ferah Kaya is waiting for Chris Zachariou, the close relative of Kakoullou Ellinas to come to Cyprus in May and she would give the mirror to him as a memory from his aunt…
Kakoullou Ellinas looked at this mirror for the last time in 1963… Exactly 54 years later, Ferah Kaya will return this mirror to her relatives…
Ferah Kaya is showing us that the humanity on this land is not dead… She is showing us that going after an artefact belonging to a "missing person", getting it back and returning to the relatives of that person is very meaningful in a very humanitarian way…
I thank Ferah Kaya for her humanity and I thank everyone who helped us to resurrect Giannis and Kakoullou Ellinas from oblivion to life – giving them the human dignity they deserve…
26.2.2017
Photo: Ferah returning this mirror of Kakoullou to her family...
(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 26th of March 2017, Sunday.
Interview with artist Ferah Kaya published in Yeniduzen in Turkish on 27 and 28 February and 1 and 2nd March 2017:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayip-sahibini-arayan-ayna-1-10295yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayip-sahibini-arayan-ayna-2-10300yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayip-sahibini-arayan-ayna-3-10306yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayip-sahibini-arayan-ayna-4-10312yy.htm
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