Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
One of my readers comes to visit me because I asked him to talk about some possible burial sites of some "missing persons" that we have been working on for the past three years… Out of the blue, starts talking about something that happened in his area… He says:
"During the war in 1974, I saw how people behaved… There were people trying to protect a Turkish Cypriot village that came under attack from the Greek Cypriot soldiers… Everyone was trying in the best way possible to protect the village. We had gathered in this village from various other villages – we had few guns, but we would resist the Greek Cypriot soldiers bombing our village… But there was this particular Turkish Cypriot who did not want to take up a gun and go to the makeshift military posts… He was afraid and was hiding and was avoiding to go… All other youngsters were trying to defend the village, but this Turkish Cypriot would not participate in this struggle for survival in those days…
As soon as the war was over, this particular Turkish Cypriot, you know what he did? He started going around looting and raping…
Next to our village there was this Monastery called …… and in this Monastery there were also some nuns… As you know, these nuns take an oath to stay as virgins till they die…
In this Monastery called …… next to our village, the nuns had good relations with my father… They knew my father and would sit down and talk from time to time…
After the war, after the rape of the nuns by this particular Turkish Cypriot, those nuns came and spoke to my father… "All these years, we protected ourselves from everything, but this guy came and raped us…" They were very sad, these nuns as my father told me…
How do you think that this particular Turkish Cypriot's end came?
I will also tell you that…
After the war, during his relations with some people, he got AIDS… When people from his village found out that he got AIDS, no one would go near him… He died crying and whining all by himself, all alone…
People in the village were saying behind him, "If there is holy justice, you see, he found his punishment… He had raped the nuns…"
I wish that we did not live through any of this…"
The two main communities of our island never attempted to "deliver" justice for the war crimes – rapes, killings of innocent women and children, executing prisoners of war – but the earth took its own course and the earth "delivered" results for all of us to see and learn from…
Another one of the rapists and killers from the Messaoria, years after the war was collecting metals from the place where military manoeuvres was taking place systematically near his village… As always, he had gone one day to collect metals to sell and an unexploded bomb went off and he lost his genitals…
Talk in the village? "You see, he had raped the women from the next village and this is his punishment…"
Humans could not "deliver" justice – coincidences did, if you want to look at it that way… The villagers definitely looked at it that way…
One particular teacher who was raping very young girls is still alive and suffering from various diseases that has to do with his peeing: He can't pee…
The talk of the villagers?
"See, he raped those young girls and now he is paying for it… May he burn in hell!"
People have a basic understanding of what should be and what should not be done…
People from all communities of our island know what is right and what is wrong…
People of our island, no matter what language they speak or in which God they believe or do not believe, have a basic understanding of what is humanity and what you should never do: That you should never hurt other people, you should never hurt children, you should never steal things that don't belong to you…
Sure, our culture has been eroded – over the decades people's humanity has been eroded… Gradually compassion, empathy, love for your neighbour, helping the poor has been eroded because of the conditions under which we are forced to live…
But you can still find people who can tell right from wrong…
And these are the people who keep humanity from being completely extinct on our homeland…
There are stories where people protected each other, saved each other's lives… There is the story of one of my friends from Trikomo whose uncle tried desperately to save the lives of Turkish Cypriots from Pervolia Trikomo… He would go out of his way to warn some of his Turkish Cypriot friends not to go out since there was an order to "kill" whichever Turkish Cypriot some Greek Cypriot police would catch… This was around 11th of May 1964 when a Greek Cypriot and two Greeks were killed while entering within the walled city of Famagusta…
My friend's uncle did warn a Turkish Cypriot family but the Turkish Cypriot family he had warned did not have the opportunity to tell others – or chose not to warn others – we don't know which… This Greek Cypriot from Trikomo saved the lives of some Turkish Cypriots, that is for sure… But he could not manage to save all…
The milkman and his wife from Pervolia Trikomo were "caught", kept in the police station of Trikomo for a night or two and then killed and buried in a well outside the wheat warehouse of Trikomo. They had names: Huseyin Ahmet Kamber and his wife Shefika… While keeping them there, some of the Greek Cypriots were also joking about how to rape Shefika, mother of five kids from Pervolia, Trikomo. We do not know what they did to her or her husband but what we know is that they killed them and threw them in a well… With the help of a reader who introduced me to a Greek Cypriot from Trikomo, Xenophon Demetriou, we managed to find this well and we showed it to the CMP and they dug and they found the remains of the couple, executed in cold blood… Xenophon Demetriou told us the story of what had happened that night when they came to bury them in that well, how the next day he saw blood and the shoe of a woman outside the well – he was courageous enough to come and show us this well and help bring closure to Sevilay Berk and her family whose parents were "missing"…
One of those who killed Sevilay's father Huseyin Ahmet Kamber even got him to take off his sweater because he really liked the pattern…
Later on, he would go and boast to his friends…
"Do you like what I wear? Do you like my sweater?" he asked his friends….
They said "Yes…"
"See, I was clever! I got it before I killed him… Because if I killed him and got the sweater, there would be a hole that would need mending… See how clever I am?"
There was him from Trikomo but there was also a kind-hearted Greek Cypriot from Trikomo who tried to save the lives of the Turkish Cypriots from his village…
Dark and light, evil and good, psychopaths and humanity are always there, everywhere on earth like an eternal pattern, making our blood freeze when we learn of such stories or making our heart melt and see hope again when we learn of the humanity of others… Evil poisons our lives but humanity cures us of this poison…
Photo: A painting by Turkish Cypriot artist Nilgün Güney...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 9th of September 2018, Sunday.
A similar article was published in Turkish in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper on the 4th of August 2018 and here is the link:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/okurlarimiz-bildiklerini-paylasmaya-devam-ediyor-12763yy.htm
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