Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
On the 7th of April 2017 Friday morning, I go to pick up my dear friend Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia from the Ledra Palace checkpoint to drive to Karpaz, to the Galatia lake where exhumations continue and the remains of "missing persons" have been found…
We asked for permission from the Turkish Cypriot Member's Office of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and kindly, the Assistant to the Turkish Cypriot Member, Murat Soysal has given us permission to go and see the exhumations in the lake…
Christina is anxious and so am I since we have been waiting for this day for so long: Christina's father Pavlos Solomi and her brother Solomis Pavlou Solomi have been "missing" from Galatia since 1974… There was information that they had been the last group to have been taken from the club where they kept the Greek Cypriot prisoners of war, together with others – a group of six – and next morning the rest of the prisoners of war would be sent by buses to Kyrenia and from there probably to Turkey by ship…
We drive without stopping and reach the lake…
How many times we came to this lake? How many times we stood on the edge and looked at the lake? How many times we walked in this lake? We had information that Christina's father and brother and the others within that group of six had been taken to this lake and shot here and buried in the lake…
When I say "lake", don't imagine a place with water… It is a dry lake, only in winter there is some water because of the rains…
We stop where the exhumation is going on and we get down with Christina…
Mehmet Zorba, the bulldozer operator whose "missing" grandfather we had helped to find years ago greets us…
"We were making trenches and trenches and finding nothing!" he says… "And now we found them!"
We tell him that we are here with the permission of Mr. Murat Soysal and he says, "We know…"
We walk towards the digging – the archaeologists are about three meters down below, digging – above them an umbrella… Arzu Deniz, the team leader greets us… We tell her that we got permission from Murat Sosyal and she says, "I know, come on down…"
The second mass grave, just as our witness had said is next to the first mass grave that had been exhumed 11 years ago… Our witness had been insisting all these years that there is a second mass grave next to the first one, that he had gone over it with his tractor, that it was freshly dug, that there was a very bad stench and lots of flies… He had given this information to those digging the first mass grave in the lake but at that time the village was so tense, as soon as they would finish they would leave… My reader would continue to insist and would tell us and show us and would continue his struggle for the next 11 years… We would write about it in 2008 and 2010 and we would go there and he would show and he would also try to persuade other witnesses who were refusing to talk to go and show… He would send witnesses to the team after persuading them to talk… He would send three different persons – two of them who knew and one of them to pass on the information from our witness – in order to ensure that the second mass grave would be found… The investigating team of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee would also do the same and finally the witnesses would be persuaded to show… Such a good result particularly for the relatives of those buried here… It will be such a great relief for them to reach this result… Both me and Christina are so grateful to all those who helped, particularly the family who has been helping us all these years and we want to thank the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee for getting this result…
With Zorba's help, I go down into the mass grave, Christina in front of me…
We are not ready for this shock because it is a shock: Just as our witness had said ("They need to dig as deep as a room's height, otherwise they won't find them" he was telling us all these years…) we are deep in the hole they have opened and in the centre, stand the remains of the humans killed and thrown into this place…
The shock comes because we realize with Christina with crystal clarity that all those years, our witness was telling the exact truth: That they need to dig deep – that if they only open trenches, they will not find them… Each time we met he would say to Christina and me, "They need to dig very deep…" and we would ask him "How deep do you mean?" and he would say "As deep as the height of a room…" So standing about three meters below the ground shocks both me and Christina – that's why our witness was so insistent at how deep they should dig, we realize… And this is the final proof of him being right all these years…
The "missing persons" in the mass grave have been frozen the way they have been thrown there – a young boy's back can be seen at the top and his face is turned over his shoulder, as if to say something… To say one last thing or to look at the world one last time, the years he is leaving behind, to look at the life he was not allowed to live… He is frozen in time and his shirt, being of nylon material stayed on him… Under him are other bodies… We can see some skulls, darkened due to staying in the lake with water and the bourri type of soil, giving its dark hue to the bones… We can see on the opposite side the legs of someone sticking out, frozen as he had been thrown, lifeless to become like a sculpture reflecting the horrors of war… We can still see the sole of his shoe on his foot…
It is like a human tangle terrorized with death and frozen in terror over time…
"It is like a Salvador Dali painting!" I say in shock!
They all turn to look at me, without really understanding what I am saying… Salvador Dali, a surrealist painter has painted scenes like this but I only understand now that he was not painting something imaginary with his distorted human bodies in great agony – he must have seen a mass grave like this and was only painting what he saw!
I wish that no human on earth would see such a sight… It is so shocking and painful… There is such agony in this mass grave that one cannot imagine, one cannot conceptualize unless you see it with your own eyes… This is not the first time that I see a mass grave like this – I have also seen the mass grave outside Chatoz, I have seen the mass grave in Palekythro, I have seen the mass grave in Synchari but perhaps this is the most dramatic image that I will never forget until I die… Just as I had felt so much pain and agony in Palekythro, seeing the women and children thrown around and frozen in time, here the face of war and the face of death is dramatized even more profoundly because they have been at three meters down below where we had walked so many times… We stepped on them, knowing and not knowing, searching with Christina, going there over and over again… I even have photos of Christina here, standing near them, standing on top of them over the years, before it was finally dug… Ferah Kaya, one of our artist friends had painted Christina as a young girl standing over the lake, reaching out with her arms open to her loved ones buried in the lake, the little house visible… The little house in the lake is visible still and so is the gandjelli where our witness had insisted that inside the gandjelli two persons had been buried…
Perhaps the most difficult job in Cyprus at the moment is that of Arzu and her team… These archaeologists are facing death in its most horrific form, having to deal with mass graves like this in their daily lives of exhumations… They will never forget these images – working together as joint teams of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot archaeologists, they would carry these images with them till the day they die years later…
Arzu calls Christina to come near her and asks her questions about her brother and her father… Most probably the young boy we see with the brown nylon t-shirt is Christina's brother but as everyone there stresses and both Christina and I know, the only way to be certain is to wait for the DNA analysis…
Christina tells them that the lower leg of her brother had been broken and had healed…
She tells them what her father was wearing: Dark blue pants and a shirt the same colour and the same material…
We take no photographs – Arzu tells Christina that taking photos from the mass grave is banned… We respect this decision since the archaeologists could lose their jobs if people are allowed to take photos from the mass grave… But in the evening as we get back to Nicosia we would be surprised that there are not only photos but also videos on SIGMA TV taken by CITY FREE PRESS… And later on, KIBRIS newspaper would publish photos from the mass grave… But Christina and me, we respect the decision of Arzu Deniz not to take photos and we don't… My readers would know that we always try to avoid publishing photos with remains since these are human beings, unless it is news connected with the laboratory and these photos from the lab are public from the website of CMP…
Finally, we get out of the mass grave and Christina thanks them all and I thank them all and we leave – Christina reluctantly… If she could, she would stay here with them but we need to move to go and thank our witness and his family who has been helping us all these years to finally to be able to reach this point…
They have cooked macaroni and chicken the traditional style for us and we sit down to eat together, to share our food, to share our gratefulness, to thank them, to show our appreciation because they were the only ones to help and to insist going forward when things were tough and the atmosphere was full of enmity and hatred… They have played a critical role in the digging of both the first and the second mass grave by personally convincing witnesses who had refused to talk and show… If not for their insistence and for their humanity and their courage, we wouldn't be getting the results we are getting now… They would soften up people who had refused to show… There aren't enough words from me or from Christina to thank them…
Our witness insists now that there are three or four more "missing persons" buried next to the second mass grave and he says, "They should expand…"
On my return to Nicosia, I would tell this information to Xenophon Kallis, the Assistant to the Greek Cypriot Member of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and to Okan Oktay, the Coordinator of the Exhumations of the CMP… It is the person who had buried them who told our witness that there should be three or four more buried in the same line of the two mass graves… Let us hope that they too would be found…
On our way back to Nicosia, Christina says, "I am so happy now…"
After so many years of efforts, she is finally relieved… Even though we know that we have to wait for the DNA results, all indications show that her loved ones were buried here…
Six months ago, she had sat down and had written a letter and relatives of "missing persons" from Komikepir and Eftakomi had also signed that letter – she had listed the places that need to be dug and amongst those possible burial sites was also this place, the place of the second mass grave… She had sent this letter to President Anastasiades, to Mr. Photis Photiou, the Commissar of Humanitarian Affairs and to Mr. Nestoras Nestoros, the Greek Cypriot Member of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee… We are thinking that this letter also contributed to the result we get today…
Again, we thank everyone who helped in every way for this and we are very grateful for their efforts…
14.4.2017
Photo: Digging at the Galatia lake…
(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 23rd of April 2017, Sunday.
(**) A slightly longer version of this article was published in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper on my pages called "Cyprus: The Untold Stories…" on the 17th and 18th of April 2017… These are the links:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/galatya-golunde-bir-toplu-mezardan-notlar1-10541yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/galatya-golunde-bir-toplu-mezardan-notlar2-10545yy.htm
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