Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
I find my notes from a mass grave that I had written exactly ten years ago, on the 4th of June, 2007…
Time flew by with so many stories, so many other mass graves that I have been to, so many other burial sites but one thing did not change: The shock, the unreal sight, the desperate cry of the dead, the way they have been thrown in the mass grave, the way they have been frozen with time…
Ten years ago, back in June 2007 I had written about the mass grave in Palekythro that one of our readers had shown to the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee… I had visited that mass grave together with our journalist friend Andreas Paraschos…
He had experience with mass graves – although I was writing about "missing persons" for the past six years, I had never seen a mass grave… This was the first time I would see with my own eyes and it would be carved in my heart to stay with me forever, a picture I would want no one ever to see…
I want to share with you my notes from the mass grave of Palekythro that I wrote ten years ago:
"The sight is so unreal, so strange that for a moment I am shaken – I bend down and start crying...
They lie in a ditch which was once dug by the Greek army – two meters high – at the entrance of the village Palekythro, on the side of the road, in an olive grove...
I know their story... For some, they were killed only because of a fight during a "robbery"... For others, the story goes much deeper – as in all massacres in Cyprus, they were shot and killed with a feeling of "vengeance". Some of the kids of those who were chased away from this village once upon a time come back to Palekythro and they do not hesitate using the guns they have in their hands and massacre whoever they find there – mainly women and children... Some of those who kill come from another village, from Epiho and they have no "pretext" for any sort of "vengeance" – not that we approve or justify this – on the contrary, whatever the "pretext", we denounce the killers…
At the mass grave, the sight is so unreal, so strange that I bend down and cry... They want to bring me water but I don't want to drink water. I don't want anything... I only want to sit by this mass grave and cry... And I want to ask: "Why?..."
It is clear that they were thrown at random here – at the top there is the body of a man, his nylon shirt still intact... Nylon does not get destroyed in nature for hundreds of years – that's why clothes, socks, cravats made up of nylon stay intact in the mass graves without rotting... Things that rot are the human bodies, the bodies of babies, the bodies of women...
This is such a "random" sight that a child's shoe sticking out of the grave, the slipper of a woman shows the urgency and the terror felt by those who buried them... The "randomness" is about the losing of humanity of the humans, of creating such mass graves, of humans not carrying a value because they are human beings in those days of "war" and "vengeance"...
Those who buried them were not the ones who killed them. Those who killed them had long gone because they had other unfinished business elsewhere...
A bit further there is a young and an old woman's body – together with the man's body, they lie as though forming a sort of a triangle... Underneath, there must be other bodies... And of course, on the sides, other bodies...
There are umbrellas around the mass grave for protection from the sun. The bodies are covered with a green cloth, so that the DNA does not get damaged from the sun.
I sit on the soil and try to come to myself...
For so many years now, I have been writing about "missing" and the "mass graves" but it is the first time that I am standing next to a mass grave. For the first time, I am seeing in what situation the people are about whom I have written articles... If this is such a painful process for me, what can the relatives of the "missing" say?...
I talk with the anthropologist who is carrying out the digging. He has a green bandanna on his head. On his hands, he has fingerless black gloves. He is a specialist of human bones. There is also an archaeologist...
The anthropologist tells me that in the evening, it takes time for him to recover, that he read my book "Oysters with the missing pearls" and wanted to forget it, that they have to be professional during the digging... Apparently, he came to Cyprus after a Cypriot girl and he puts his hands in soil, searching for the "missing" Cypriots. "You have literally put your fate in this soil" I tell him and he smiles, a sad smile...
We speak with the Colombian specialist – he talks about the "missing" of Colombia, the digging experiences he had and how sad he was when he had to give a father, on New Year's day, his son's body that he managed to find...
It is the first time that as a Turkish Cypriot and a Greek Cypriot journalist we are standing together next to a mass grave. I came here with my journalist friend, Andreas Paraschos from POLITIS. Paraschos understands the shock I am going through because he went through such shocks in the past. As the journalist who discovered that the number of the Greek Cypriot "missing" is not in fact 1619 and as he wrote articles forcing the Greek Cypriot authorities to dig Lakatamia cemetery, he was at the Lakatamia cemetery for days... Years later when the digging began there, he was standing next to the mass graves in Lakatamia, having lived through such shocks long before me...
In the first days when he was constantly going to Lakatamia cemetery, the persons living around the cemetery were curious. One of them stopped him to ask, "What are you doing in this cemetery?"
When he said, "I am a journalist, my job is to do research..." the guy answered, "And we thought you were a crazy or a strange person..." As the digging continued, the "official missing person" numbers started going down... It is easy to say all of this in a paragraph but Paraschos had to live through that painful process during that time... He learnt what it meant to stand next to a mass grave. That's why, he is trying to take me away from there... A bit further there are big sieves – they put the soil through these sieves – and there are a lot of people around us. I cut olive branches from the olive trees around the mass grave – I will give these to the Souppouris and Liasis families. These trees were nurtured with the blood of their loved ones...
In the last few days we have been going to Tashkent (Vouno) in order to find the only living witness of the Tochni massacre, that is Suat Kafadar. We could not find him at home. I introduce Paraschos to Cemaliye... Cemaliye, who lost her son and her husband at Tochni welcomes Paraschos and talks about her "missing" son and husband, how the men were collected from their homes and brought to the elementary school, how they were taken with the buses and how they never returned. Again the name of this guy from Tochni, A., comes up. He had taken an 11 year old kid from his mother. When the mother protested he had said "If you are not breastfeeding him, it means that he is not a child anymore..." That is why, there is also kids in the mass grave of Tochni...
Tochni is a big wound in Cemaliye's heart, constantly bleeding – every single crease on her face tells of the long days and nights, waiting for her husband and son. How many other women are there in this village called "Tashkent" on top of the mountain, like Cemaliye?
As a very young journalist, I had come to this village – I wanted to find out about the story of Tochni. This was a village of women who had become widows and my friend Cevat Adakul had taken me here. I had started learning the story of Tochni back in the 80s. But years later, when I interviewed Cemaliye – the auntie of Hasan Kahvecioglu – this had put me into a shock... For 48 hours, I could not come to myself...
As the night goes down and as we leave Tashkent (Vouno), Paraschos complains of a pain in his stomach. This is not a stomach upset because of something he has eaten – the massacre of Tochni has upset him...
The stories about Tochni are also so unreal and strange that it is impossible to digest them easily. When they had massacred the 83 Turkish Cypriots from Tochni, they had buried them at a certain place. Later when the UN suspected that there might be a mass grave there, they sent some Greek Cypriot soldiers to make it look like "military manoeuvres", telling the UN to come back the next day, so the "manoeuvres" would be over. During the night, after an order from "above", they dug up the mass grave and dispersed the bones, carrying them with trucks and burying them in different places. That is why the digging of the Tochni mass graves already looks like a painful new process. And now since the "missing" of the Kaymakli (Omorphita) could not be found in the wells in Strovolos, Tochni is being opened. But the "missing" of Kaymakli are still in Strovolos, waiting in the wells to be found... 50 persons cannot evaporate – somebody must have seen something, must have heard something, must know where the actual big wells are... Up till now, since the wells that were opened were only the shepherds' small wells, they could only find 2 persons. The big mass grave is still waiting to be opened in Strovolos.
There are tens of mass graves waiting to be opened – in Athalassa, Petrofani, Mashera, Paralimni, Galatya, Tziaos and other places – Cypriots killed in both sides and buried urgently are waiting to be found, to be given back to their loved ones, to be buried in a humanitarian way and to be remembered in an appropriate way...
All of these are the reflections of our painful history – the red shoe of a child sticking out of the mass grave, a nylon shirt that stayed intact, a woman's slipper, a cravat... A golden ring where the wife's name is engraved... The bodies thrown at random in the mass graves carry the shame of all of those who have seen, heard and stayed silent... Whichever language we speak and in whatever part of the island we live, the presence of the mass graves is the common shame of our history... And as this bleeding wound is cleaned up, perhaps we can find a way of getting back our humanity, together...
4.6.2007"
Photo: With our journalist friend Andreas Paraschos back in 2007 at the Palekythro mass grave...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 15th of October 2017, Sunday.
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