Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Plutis Georgiades was from Kythrea but was living in Neapolis, Nicosia with his wife Elli and his two small daughters…
He was a nice person, someone whom you could say "He only had friends…"
He was kind and easily made friends…
Most of his friends were Turkish Cypriots…
Why?
Because he was in charge of the Nicosia Shop of the Singer Sewing Machines…
This was the time when very few readymade clothing was available so everyone was sewing their clothes or going to seamstresses or tailors to get clothes sewn for them…
This was the time when in villages young girls would be sent to learn to sew at special schools of sewing and tailoring…
I have seen many photographs and I have spoken to many old women who had gone to such schools…
In the village, one famous seamstress would have 10-15 very young girls and she would teach them her profession… After some years they would graduate and would be fit to start the small business of sewing clothes on their own…
Naturally there was a great demand for Singer sewing machines and Plutis Georgiades, as head of the Nicosia area would go with his team everywhere in Nicosia area to sell Singer sewing machines, to collect the money, to give service to his customers…
He had a lot of Turkish Cypriot customers and he would cross almost every day to the Turkish Cypriot areas for this or that reason in connection with the business…
At the end of 1963 in December, he would go to check on a customer to whom he had been selling industrial type of sewing machines since this Turkish Cypriot had a factory of textiles…
Maybe Plutis Georgiades could not find him in his factory or could not go there? On those dates the conflict among the two communities had already begun so if I am correct, the factory is in a place he could not travel to on those days… Instead, he would go to the house of his customer, not far from where I live in Chaghlayan, Nicosia, within the walled city…
At the door of the house, he would ask for his customer from some Turkish Cypriot soldiers there – what he did not know was that the twin houses he had gone to on the walls, close to the Zafer Cinema, just across a children's creche had been occupied by a "team" of the Turkish Cypriot paramilitary organisation TMT…
He would be taken inside one of those houses and would be killed there…
His body would be thrown down on the back stairs of the Chaghlayan Children's Garden and he would remain there, lifeless, for a couple of days…
During those days, a young Turkish Cypriot from this team would go and check the body and would find his watch on his arm… He would take the watch of Plutis from his arm and put it on his own arm…
Some years later, this young man would die in his sleep, choking on his own vomit: He would still be wearing the watch he took from the dead body of Plutis Georgiades who had left behind a tearful wife and two small kids to face the tragedy and the grave difficulties of life… Now this young man also would leave a tearful wife and young children to face the same fate: a twist of nature of settling things? People who knew the story would wonder…
After some days from the horrible killing of Plutis Georgiades, the Red Cross or British soldiers would come to take his body and take him to the Nicosia General Hospital… The Greek Cypriot police would call Christodoulos Evgeniou who had been the boss of Plutis to go and identify the body in the morgue…
He would go there to identify among other dead bodies, the body of Plutis… They had shot him from his face so he would be unrecognizable but still Mr. Evgeniou would recognize him… They had also used skewers on his body to kill him and Mr. Evgeniou would see the holes on his body, feeling horrified!
Mr. Evgeniou would be shocked! Everyone – both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots who had known Plutis – would be shocked and surprised! Why kill Plutis when he had such good relations with Turkish Cypriots and so many good friends?
For many years, I would get bits and pieces from this story and it would stay with me for a very long time… Until one day, my dear friend Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia would tell me that there is one friend of hers who has details of a Greek Cypriot killed in 1963… We would go to visit him together and I would be shocked to find out more details from him – he had been a kind of a witness to this murder – he had seen the blood after they had killed him and he had seen the body lying on the back stairs of the children's garden… He had known the team who had killed Plutis… I would sit there with goosebumps on my arms, listening to this man… And being thankful for sharing what he knew with us…
Another friend, Mehmet Birinci, would help to find one of his good friends – a famous Turkish Cypriot business person – his father – Tekin Birinci.
Tekin Birinci had been an agent for the Singer Sewing Machines and also a good friend of Plutis Georgiades… In fact, it had been the idea of Plutis Georgiades for Tekin to start a business of selling sewing machines… One day, Plutis had gone to the driving school of Tekin Birinci and had seen that his shop on the Kyrenia Road in the centre of the walled city of Nicosia could become a very good "showroom" and he would tell Tekin Birinci, "Why don't I bring a Singer sewing machine and put it here? I could also make you an agent of the Singer Sewing Machines…"
Tekin would accept and would quickly become one of the most famous Turkish Cypriot businessmen in our community…
Tekin had come in the 50s to Nicosia from Agios Nikolaos, Paphos as a ten-year-old boy with his mother so he could attend school… They would rent a house in Nicosia and he would go to school with his elder sister and brother… A year later his mother would go back to Paphos and he would move to a dormitory for students to stay and continue studies. During the three years of secondary school after elementary school, he would learn Greek in class, twice a week and this would help him with his relations in his future life of business. At 15 he would go back to Paphos to learn how to become a car mechanic and work for a year and a half and then come back to Nicosia to convince a British soldier he knew to make him a "special" or "auxiliary" police… The English soldier would refuse since his age was young but later on the soldier himself would "correct" his birth date to enable Tekin to become a "special" police… As a young boy, he would start working in the garage of the police, checking cars… Another older friend of his would convince Tekin to quit the police job and come and work together in his school of driving… Tekin would do that and that's when he would meet Plutis… The wife of Mr. Evgeniou, Avgi, had a licence but didn't drive… Plutis would come to his shop to ask him to teach driving to Mrs. Avgi… That's how their friendship would begin… Tekin would teach Mrs. Avgi how to drive and also put a Singer sewing machine in his driving school that Plutis had brought him… He would start selling sewing machines and a bit later expanding his shop and add refrigerators, washing machines and television sets… Later on he would start importing cars… When knitting machines of Singer would become the thing of the day, Tekin would have a team of women teaching Turkish Cypriot women how to use these machines to knit sweaters… Tekin would open branches wherever Turkish Cypriots had been living and he would be responsible for the sales of Singer sewing machines and knitting machines for the Turkish Cypriot community… He would have branches or other shop owners to whom he would distribute these in Limassol, Famagusta, Vatyli and his business would boom! He would open a shop of Singer and make his brother Ergin Birinci a partner – this shop still exists today, run by the wife of Ergin in Nicosia… Throughout his life, Tekin Birinci would continue his good relations with the Singer family…
When I would call him about Plutis Georgiades, immediately he would call Christodoulos Evgeniou to make an appointment for us and he would take me there… We would go together to Makarios Avenue where the central office of Singer still exists and meet Mr. Evgeniou… It had been Tekin Birinci who had taught driving to his wife Avgi and throughout the years their friendship has continued… He too had a lot of Turkish Cypriot friends whose names he would mention to me… He would tell me of the day he had to go and identify Plutis Georgiades in the morgue…
I would try to contact Chriso, one of the daughters of Plutis Georgiades who lives in Nicosia and we would speak on the phone couple of times… We would not be able to meet since the day of the appointment, one of my close relatives would fall and break her hip and I would have to go to the hospital… Some months later when I would try to follow up, I would not get a response… My friend Christina would find his other daughter who lives in Limassol, Toulla, and she would give us a photo of her father for which I am grateful… I can understand how much tragedy they have gone through and I can also understand if they can't trust easily a Turkish Cypriot journalist, asking questions about their father… So I would stop trying and instead would interview Mr. Evgeniou and Tekin Birinci about the death of a Singer salesman, Mr. Plutis Georgiades…
He is buried in Strovolos I find out and I share the pain of the family… May he rest in peace and may we never see such days when innocent people are killed just because they are from another community…
I thank all my readers who have helped me to compile the story of Mr. Plutis Georgiades…
8.4.2017
Photo: Plutis Georgiades...
(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 14th of May 2017, Sunday.
(**) This article in more extensive format has been published in Turkish in YENİDÜZEN on my pages called "Cyprus: The Untold Stories..." over a period of four days in four parts between 6-10 April 2017 – The links are here:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/bir-singer-saticisinin-olumu1-10484yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/galatya-golundeki-kazilarda-bes-kayiptan-geride-kalanlara-ulasildi-10488yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/bir-singer-saticisinin-olumu-3-10495yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/bir-singer-saticisinin-olumu-4-10504yy.htm
NOTE TO MY READERS: Last Sunday Mr. Kypros Dimosthenus called me about my article on the Athalassa Psychiatric Hospital and said that there were NO anti-aircraft guns on top of the hospital. I visited him and his wife Lili in their house and we had an interview... We will publish what they told me in detail in the coming weeks. I thank him for clarifying, correcting and helping us to find the truth...
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