Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Death lingered in the house… Sadness lingered in the house… Poverty lingered in the house… Lack of a father who died of sadness under persecution of a heart attack always lingered in the house…
It was like a mist over the walls, in the garden, in the rooms…
It was like the colour black trying to swallow the light…
It was like a bad dream that continued to live even in hours when one was awake…
Death lingering in the house…
Of course, it wasn't always lingering there – there were moments, hours, days when its presence would be hidden…
We would have a lot of happy days but then darkness would come back again with my mother laying on the couch and crying:
"Why did you go? Why did you leave me alone on this earth? Why you left me alone!!!!"
She would cry for her husband – my father – when things would get rough…
There were a lot of occasions for crying about him: When the calendars approached the time of Bayram – the religious festivities of the Turkish Cypriots where you visit elder relatives or people younger than you visit you and you offer sweets and some money for kids – or New Year… Or persecution of my mother and the amount of pressure put on her by the Turkish Cypriot authorities who were determined to make our lives miserable, even after my father was gone, the following of the secret police in civilian police both inside the library where my mother worked as a librarian and when we were going home on foot, a civilian policeman following us on a bicycle… When we would go into the market to buy bread, the civilian policeman stopping with his bicycle, not getting off his bicycle but putting one foot on the ground, holding onto his bicycle and waiting for us to get out so he can continue to follow… In the library, my mother's fascist bosses coming and humiliating her, shouting at her, trying to belittle her… Tears and tears and tears that would flow like a river… Because my father Niyazi Uludagh was one of the conscientious objectors when he had refused to join the paramilitary underground organization TMT and he would be punished with prison and unemployment and persecution by the Turkish Cypriot regime because of this…
But the worst was when my father's anniversary of death approached…
Then it would become a nightmare in the house…
My mother would fall sick for at least a week before, laying on the couch after coming home from work, crying and crying and crying…
Then, preparing for the commemoration day, all the fuss, all the things we were to do, all the chairs I had to carry from our neighbours, all the things she needed to buy or cook… All the cups to be washed for tea… The house to be cleaned and dusted… The people to be invited… The Hodja who would recite `Mevlid` (the religious singing to commemorate the dead person), the money he would take as payment for this to be ready, a special package of food for him that we were offering at home to be prepared, the incense to be burned during the "Mevlid" and the head scarves to be ready to be worn during this ceremony… The lemonade to be ready for those who did not want tea, the big teapot to be washed and cleaned, the "Sadrazam Sucughu" (a kind of lokoumi sweet with walnuts inside) to be bought fresh from the Bandabuliya and cut in pieces and the flaounes to be made by us at home… The halloumi to be grinded, the pastry dough to be knead, the big kitchen table to be prepared and the pastry to be rolled out with an oklava… Pieces of pastry to be cut, the filling with halloumi and eggs and fresh mint from the garden to be put in these pieces of pastry, the eggs to be whisked and brushed over them and sesame to be sprinkled over them and then to put these batches in the oven and cook them, get them out, put another batch and get everything ready for my father's commemoration…
All of this done with frenzy, with anxiousness so that nothing is forgotten, so everything is perfect, so my mother would express her love for my father through these acts, so that he is not forgotten…
We would also prepare rosewater in an antique bottle that would pass on to me from my mother – I would go around when the `Mevlid` was being recited and sprinkle in everyone's palm a little bit of rose water so they would put it on their faces and smell it and remember life among the atmosphere of death…
At the end of the `Mevlid`, the Hodja would say `Mr. Niyazi Uludagh, this Mevlid is a gift to you from your wife Turkan, the daughter of Mehmedali and your daughters Sevgul and Ilkay…` and then I would start crying… This would be like a blow, a statement that yes, he is dead, he is gone and you are left here on this earth, without him…
All the preparations for the commemoration day – 3 April was the day my father had died and I was only 7 years old when we lost him - would take at least a week and afterwards, my mother would again be ill for at least three more days, just laying on the couch and thinking of her life companion, the man she loved, the father of her children long gone and she, left alone on this earth to cope with huge problems of persecution by the regime, as well as deep poverty… And no one to help her…
The shadow of death would extend not just on these days but in all aspects of social life…
In those days a woman who lost her husband and who was a widow wouldn't go to weddings or celebrations as was the `tradition` of our community… They would think this is `shameful` and maybe she is looking for another husband… So in order to protect herself from gossip, my mother would refrain from going to weddings or other celebrations…
A woman who was a widow would not go to the beach or a picnic alone either… That too, would be a `shameful` act…
As a result, we would be stuck at home…
One day as a child I would cry so much that we never go to picnics my mother would take me in our old Volkswagen to the side of a road just outside Nicosia to have a picnic together, all alone…
When neighbours would start the charcoal to make shish kebap, the smell would come to our house… Traditionally in Cyprus, the `kebap` is the `man's job` and women didn't make the kebap… That smell would cover us and we would long for it but no man at home to make kebap… So my mother would try to do it in the grill of the oven – of course it would not smell or taste the same… For years, we would long for kebap until the time I would get married with my heart comrade… Then, we would practically make him do `kebap` for mother and me at least twice a week! He wouldn't understand our enthusiasm for `kebap` - it would be a kind of `vengeance` from life for depriving us of kebap for so many years…
My sister Ilkay and her husband Kutlu Adali, the author-journalist of YENIDUZEN who would be killed in front of his house in 1996, would take us to the beach sometimes… Then these would be so memorable days for us because it would be a place we would not be able to go because of the `values` of the community in those days… Then, it would be like a festival in our lives, just going to the beach… I would be so excited and ready to go and embrace the waves, to build sand castles, to eat Formosa plums from the picnic refrigerator of my sister, to play with the children of my sister on the beach…
We would put up a tent and carry all the things from the car: The roast beef my mother cooked or the macaroni in the oven or dolmades and of course lots of fruit – at least one big watermelon to put on the shore so it can stay cool to eat in the afternoon… We would be at the six-and-a-half-mile beach and I would learn to swim there and take care of the kids of my sister, playing games in the water…
When shadows would start growing, we would head back to Nicosia but before Nicosia, we would have a brief stop in Kyrenia to get cones of ice cream to eat in the car and spill it on our swimsuits…
We would come home and all the kids would have a shower one by one in our bathroom before my sister and her husband would head back to their own house… On such days, the shadow of death would disappear, giving space to living and light…
Growing up with the shadow of death lingering over our lives, missing my father so much from a very early age and feeling lack of his presence in our lives in a very strong way, it would not cross my mind that in my future, this would help me to understand how children of `missing persons` would feel… I would be able to empathise and understand the children of `missing` because of my own experience with my father whom I lost at the age of seven and whom I still miss so much until today…
Every experience in life counts, I think… Even the days of trauma and misery count… Because you can make something better out of them… It would help me to understand better the relatives of `missing persons` from both our communities and drive me with an urgency to find a way to help them despite the fact that my experience is far from the trauma they have been living through… My father is not `missing` but deceased but their fathers are `missing` and that is a far bigger drama than what I have gone through…
4.11.2018
Photo: My mother Turkan and my father Niyazi in the '40s…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 23rd of December 2018, Sunday.
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