Sevgul Uludag
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Today I would like to share an article by our dear friend Leyla Kiralp whose husband had been taken from Zygi by EOKA-B and killed and disappeared together with all those taken from Zygi and Tochni… Their remains were found in Gerasa and Pareklisia and returned to their families for proper burials…
Leyla Kiralp who has written books about her pain and suffering and who has always been in the forefront of the struggle for the reunification of our island wrote an article about "The wells around the Melandra House…" and had sent it to me… I published it in YENIDUZEN newspaper and now I want to share it with my readers of POLITIS…
Here is the article of Leyla Kiralp:
"It is the month of February. The year is 2017… It is a sunny but a cold day… I look through the windows of the Melandra House towards the Pentataktylos and the Troodos mountains… There are endless fields separating the two mountain ranges… It swells and moves like the green sea… What a beautiful name it has: "The Mesaoria…" Unfortunately in this sea of green, I can see very few trees… Why aren't there any trees, I ask myself… My eyes stay on the horizon where the green sea of the Mesaoria joins with the blue sky… I gaze and gaze and gaze…
It is cold but sunny… I dress up well and go inside the green sea… This year, the flowers in the fields have blossomed early. All the fields, the planted fields, the little hills, they are all colourful… I can hear the excited singing of the birds, the flap of the wings of the crows who get anxious from my footsteps, I can see the ripples of waves of the wheat fields created by the blowing wind, I can see the white clouds that change shape over the mountains very quickly…
My feet lead me not on the soil that I always walk on but inside the wheat fields… As I walk further, I start feeling excited… I have realized that since 1974, I have never walked in the wheat fields… I feel heat rising up to my cheeks and intensifying on my left breast… How I used to walk inside the wheat fields to collect flowers of the wheat before 1974… I would have a whole bunch and would carry them home to my mother. We would put them in a vase with my mother and would put it on top of the buffet…
Again I remember our house, our village Mari… That thin, that warm, that deep pain starts from the depths of my heart again… I feel I miss my mother, my father, my villagers… White, pink and purple tulips (laledes) would look at me with their black eyes among the wheat fields. I reached out but could not bring myself to pick them up. I had my old camera hanging over my shoulder, so I took photographs of the tulips…
There is a military post that remains from 1974, that has been built with very solid material… The green "gavjdar" surrounding it has grown around it, taller than me… I used to see this old military post from the Melandra House. But for the first time I have the urge to go inside… I felt eerie but still continue to get inside the military post. I took a first step but my second step would take me back. What a solid, strong military post… The house has come down but the military post is standing strong. Was there any fighting in this military post? This question pushes me back further… There are seven field wells around the military post. I had seen two of them before but the other five wells, I only see now… The motor homes of all the seven wells have been demolished… I can see parts of the walls above some of them, of their motor homes – three or five stones standing there…
The fields are being planted and harvested but the wells remain open without any security precautions… As I approach the wells, I feel eerie inside… Birds nesting inside the wells feel fearful at the sound of my footsteps and they fly off… I approached the wells closely… I started feeling fear… But still I took some small stones and threw inside… All of them would echo the same sad sound and would throw the sound back at me… I took photos, as many as I could…
All of a sudden I had the question appearing in my mind whether there could be some missing persons buried in these wells… It was as though I had scorching water splashing through my head down… All of a sudden, it was as though I could hear screams from the wells coming from down below… A lot of Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots are still "missing" since 50 years… Still, their fate is unknown… A lot of them whose remains have been found were in fact found in such isolated, quiet places, inside empty wells… What if there are missing persons inside these wells?
When I was going back to the Melandra House, my eyes would not see the colourful tulips… My ears would not hear the songs of the birds… It was as though the wind threw me back at the gandjelli of the Melandra House. I found myself there…
I sat on the first step of the stairs. My relatives who had been "missing" had been found after 40 years and their remains given back to us in small boxes. They now have graves where we can visit them. Yes they have graves but the issue of "missing persons" is still a continuing trauma for me… We will pass this trauma onto our children as a heritage… Like the chain of rings, this trauma will continue from one generation to the next generation…
The Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee should investigate these wells to see if any "missing" had been buried inside them… They should do investigation about whether there had been any fighting around this military post next to the Melandra House in Famagusta, on the road of Salamis…
Those who know anything about "missing persons" should speak up and say what they know… Don't carry what you know as a secret to the other world when you die… Speak up so that you can be a cure to the expectations of the relatives of "missing persons"… Check your memory… Check your conscience… And in the name of humanity, speak up if you know something…
And you, the politicians! Just as you are interested in the territory, the guarantees, the property, the history of ENOSIS and TAKSIM, please take care of the problems of the relatives of "missing persons" whose loved ones went "missing" due to the ENOSIS-TAKSIM fight…"
(Leyla Kiralp – February 2017).
17.3.2017
Photo: One of the wells around the Melandra House...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 18th of April 2017, Tuesday.
(*) The link to Leyla Kiralp's article published in Turkish on my page called "Cyprus: The Untold Stories" in YENİDÜZEN newspaper:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/leyla-kiralp-yazdi-kuyular-10266yy.htm
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