Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
As was the custom, the family had got new pairs of shoes for all the kids who were getting ready to start the new term at school… Shoes and uniforms were ready and when the school began again, they would go running, happy to have new shoes and new uniforms…
Fatma was in the second grade at the elementary school… She had her new black school shoes on and she was very happy and eager…
But coming back home from school, she would get a shock – it would start raining and her black shoes would start running their black colour, turning the shoes into greyish tones and all her school mates would start laughing at her… She would go home crying, greatly disappointed with her new shoes…
`Daaad!` she would call out to her father who had gotten the shoes from Nicosia, from the `Cabacaba` shoe maker's shop…
`Look what happened! What kind of shoes you got me! Everybody was laughing at me!`
Her dad would say, `Don't you cry my baby, won't I go there and show this Cabacaba what he has done! I will bring these shoes back to his shop and give him a piece of my mind and get you new shoes! Here, don't cry now! I will get you a new pair of shoes…`
Cabacaba shoemakers had in fact painted white shoes with the colour black and had sold it to him… That's why when it rained the colour would run and the shoes would turn greyish…
In fact, Fatma's father Huseyin Ali would take the shoes and promise to go to Nicosia and change them and bring her back new shoes…
He would take the shoes with him when he was going to work at Mia Milia at the Alkiviades Farm…
But he would never come back, neither the shoes for Fatma…
Every day she would run from school to her house with anticipation, thinking `Today my father will come back and bring me new shoes!`
She would run up to the point where there had been a very big carob tree and when she would see that her father was not there, she would be disappointed… The big carob tree, next to her house was the place she used to see her father when he would come back with a basket… A basket full of things for kids and for his family…
Huseyin Ali would `disappear` from the farm and with him, another young boy of Louroudjina, their neighbour's son Ramadan Ismail…
They would go to work in mid-December 1963… Normally they would stay at the farm they were working at and would only come once every fortnight back to Louroudjina… When the intercommunal fighting would break out around the 21st of December 1963, Huseyin Ali and Ramadan Ismail would get stuck at the farm and would not be able to get back to Louroudjina. And that's where they would go `missing`, both Huseyin and Ramadan…
Huseyin Ali had been from Agia Anna and had married Emine Hanim from Louroudjina… Emine Hanim or as the Louroudjadis would call her `Emin Dudu` would go as a bride to live in Agia Anna… They would have three children: Hasan, Osman and Fatma… When Fatma was one year old – that must be around 1956 – they would go back to live in Louroudjina for a year. And then when Fatma was 2 years old - which must be around 1957 – they would go to London to settle and work there like most Cypriots in those days… For about five years they would stay in London and Huseyin Ali would work in a rope factory and then in a canned food factory… Emine Hanim would be working as a seamstress from home… But after a while, Emine Hanim would have health problems when she would lose her child during the late stages of her pregnancy and she would feel depressed… And the doctors would recommend for them to go back to Cyprus so she can recover… So they would come back to Cyprus in 1962 and settle in Louroudjina… Huseyin Ali would find work in the cow farm in Mia Milia and would go there together with his young villager Ramadan Ismail…
There had been four Turkish Cypriots working in the same farm at Mia Milia and a Greek Cypriot priest who lived in a small church next to the farm would warn two of them that there were rumours that they might kill the Turkish Cypriots at the farm. The priest was from Morphou and had come and settled in the small church near the farm and was living there since 1958… The two Turkish Cypriots, Ali from Nicosia and Dervish Mazhar Zemin would leave and would not have time to warn Huseyin and Ramadan about what the priest had said…
According to rumours, one night Huseyin Ali and Ramadan Ismail were sitting in the coffee shop – it had been a cold night and since they were staying in the mandra, they would go at night to pass their time and feel warm in the coffee shop… When they would get up to leave, it was rumoured that they would be killed and buried somewhere near the farm…
Years later, in 2010, a Greek Cypriot reader would tell me that they had been killed and buried in a riverbed next to the farm where they had been working… I would share this information eight years ago with the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee… This place was either in the buffer zone or in the military zone, so I would not be able to go and look…
So when Fatma Huseyin Aghdiran would come back for holidays she would call me and we would meet and talk… When I would enquire whether there had been any digging around the farm, I would find out that there had been no digging… So I would republish what I had written eight years ago so that perhaps CMP could start new investigations about the `missing` Huseyin and Ramadan… Fatma had been waiting for the past 55 years for any information about her father…
Fatma's mother, after the disappearance of her husband would realize she had been pregnant with their fourth child and after nine months from his disappearance, would give birth to a baby boy whom she would call `Umit" – meaning `Hope`… `Hope` that he would come back alive, `hope` that he would return to his family safe and sound… But he would never return and `Umit" would grow up without ever having seen his father…
Emine Hanim would do everything possible to survive – a hard working woman, she would take care of goats, using their milk to make halloumi, yiagourti and anari to sell and also to use at home. She had a cow that Huseyin Ali had bought and she would also use the milk from the cow… When the time came, she would sell a few goats to get the school uniforms and school shoes for her kids… `My mother tried very hard in order for us not to feel the emptiness left by my father and I can say that she was successful since she was a very hard-working woman – and she didn't get help from anyone else, she did it all by herself…`
But despite this, some nights they would have to have only tea and some paksimeti for dinner…
`Paksimeti or some bread and tea… My mother would work hard so that we would not have that, but some nights unfortunately was like that… But everyone was like that – those were times of war…`
In 1971, Emine Hanim would lose her eldest son Hasan – while doing his military service in Nicosia, one of his friends would `accidentally` shoot him and he would die… They would try to bury him secretly in Louroudjina but a distant relative would see and notify them, so they would run to his funeral… The family would be devastated a second time… Fatma's mother would not feel well for two years and Fatma would take care of her and her young brother Umit who was barely 7 years old… Fatma would stop going to school in order to take care of the family after her brother Hasan's death…
In 1975 Fatma would get married with Mehmet Aghdiran from Louroudjina and would go to settle in Australia in 1976 where he had been living since 1972… After a few years, she would reunite her family in Australia: Her mother and her brothers would come and join her there and they would settle in Wollongong, next to Sydney… But they would never forget their father and Cyprus and would come for holidays at every possible occasion…
Fatma has another bitter memory from Cyprus: Right after the war was over in 1974, towards the end of the year, they would be `given` a house in Kythrea… So they would go together with others to see what this house looked like…
`I went into that house and I wish I had never gone in… On the table there was food which had moss on them… On the floor were photographs of kids, passports, clothes… I started crying and couldn't stop… I collected all those photos and passports… I was crying so much that I could not see, I was so emotional… I found a `Burda` magazine and put all the photos in there, there were a lot of photos… And I took them with me… When I went out, what did I see? People who had come with us had collected all the washing machines and refrigerators from the houses and had loaded them on a truck! When I saw that, I started crying more… I couldn't understand how people could do that! I kept those photos in our house in Louroudjina and I blame myself for not taking them with me when I was going to live in Australia… Because when I came back to Louroudjina, I couldn't find our house in place! It was demolished! And the photos gone with the house…
We did not take the house in Kythrea at the time that we were given it: I could not live in such a place and it would never be a `compensation` for either my brother or my father… Nothing could `pay off` the disappearance of my father or losing my brother…`
Today Fatma has three kids: A 41-year-old daughter, a 38-year-old son and another son who is 33 years old…
She is still expecting news about the fate of her father and wants his remains to be found so he can have a proper burial site – a grave where she and her children can go to visit him in his eternal resting place…
If you have any information about the farm in Mia Milia where Huseyin Ali and Ramadan Ismail `disappeared` from, if you have heard or know anything about their `disappearance`, please call me with or without your name… My CYTA mobile number is 99 966518… You can also send me an e-mail at caramel_cy@yahoo.com or find me on Messenger as `Sevgul Uludag`…
Let us try to help Fatma to find her `missing` father's burial site if we can…
Photo: Fatma with her brother and mother and her "missing" father…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 8th of July 2018, Sunday. An extended version of this article (a detailed interview with Fatma Huseyin Aghdiran was published in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper in Turkish on the 30th and 31st of May and 1st of June 2018. The links to these articles are:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayip-bir-babayi-beklemek1-12448yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayip-bir-babayi-beklemek-2-12454yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayip-bir-babayi-beklemek3-12459yy.htm
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