Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Digging begins in Agios Ermolaos some time ago for two Cypriot women: One Turkish Cypriot and one Greek Cypriot…
The remains of the Turkish Cypriot "missing" woman, Lutfiye Ahmet are found in the well in the yard of her house but the remains of the Greek Cypriot "missing" woman, Theodora Savva Kallis, are not found in the well in the yard of her house…
Both were old… Both went "missing" in 1974… There were rumours that both were killed and buried in the wells of their own houses…
Then a woman calls me from the village and says that "No, Lutfiye Ahmet was not killed… She was afraid when war began and tried to go down the well to hide and probably she fell and died…"
We don't know yet if she was killed or if, as claimed, she went down the well to hide and died there…
Only after analysis in the laboratory of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, perhaps her family will have no answers…
But we have more information about Theodora Kallis and the other "missing" Greek Cypriot women from the village when a reader calls me and gives me information…
She says:
"In Agios Ermolaos, Mrs. Xenou was killed by a Turkish Cypriot policeman visiting the village.
Her name was Polyxeni Neophitou Miltiadou… I was a child at that time, but I remember her quite well… She could not walk and she was an old woman. In 1974, although her family had left, she had remained in the village, she was alone.
The Turkish Cypriots from Agios Ermolaos had gone to Shilloura when war broke out in 1974 and returned only after some time… When the Turkish Cypriots had returned to the village, they saw that Mrs. Xenou was alive. Every day the Turkish soldiers in the village had taken her some food and some water and took care of her…
Mrs. Xenou would say to the Turkish Cypriots who returned to the village, "Please don't go away again, don't leave me alone, I have no one here, I have you…"
Then a Turkish Cypriot policeman came to the village and was looking for Greek Cypriots in the village. He was asking everyone whether there were any Greek Cypriots who remained in the village. When he heard that Mrs. Xenou, who could not walk, was there, he went to find her and kill her… Killing of Mrs. Xenou in this way by him had made the Turkish Cypriots of the village very upset… They had asked him why he did that… This man's name as far as I remember was ….. and he is no longer alive…
And then they had buried Mrs. Xenou in a pile of fertilizer… Time had passed and in February 1975, they had decided to remove the fertilizer (gubri) from that yard and when removing the fertilizer, the bones of Mrs. Xenou had come out… I was a kid back then and they had chased me away so that I would not see such a scene… Then one of those from the village had said that these remains having stayed so long in the manure, could spread disease so they had decided to burn these bones. As far as I remember, the one who spoke about disease and burning bones was working in the Nicosia Turkish Cypriot municipality and he too passed away now…
Then the fertilizer was removed from there and Mrs. Xenou's bones were burned, as I heard… I do not have any information about what they did with the bones that they supposedly burned.
As far as I know, Mrs. Lutfiye Ahmet was not killed. When the Turkish war planes came at the beginning of the war she was so scared, she tried to hide in the well… This well was in the yard of her house…"
Another reader has more information about Mrs. Xenou:
"Mrs. Xenou was from Sysklipos but had got married to Agios Ermolaos. She was born around 1918. The Turkish Cypriot police sergeant who killed her had found around 700-800 sterling pounds in her house and took it. This police officer who had come to the village from elsewhere – he was not from Agios Ermolaos – later on would brag about the money he had found and say "This woman was rich, she had sterling pounds and I took it and I killed her…"
The same police officer had also killed Theodora Kallis while she was eating macaroni and chicken and he would brag about that as well in the coffee shop. When he had gone to kill Theodora Kallis, he had with him someone else from another village."
I would find out that the Turkish Cypriot sergeant who had killed Theodora Kallis and Mrs. Xenou with his own pistol would some time later lose his own son… What goes around comes back around as the saying goes… What else one can say? Who gave us the right to take life? Who gave anyone the right to kill another human being or an animal? We all belong to the earth and we should respect life first of all… Not go around killing innocent old women, who cannot even walk… And I do not accept that war is a "pretext" – no… War is not a "pretext" – if you have a bad heart, you are a bad person whether you are in times of war or in times of peace… The primary thing we should all teach our children should be to respect life…
We had gone to the house of Theodora Savva Kallis together with her granddaughter Dora Parmakli Deliyannis on the 10th of April 2018, accompanied by the investigators of CMP – Dora wanted very much to find the remains of her grandmother Theodora Kallis who had gone "missing" from her house… The last time she had seen her was on the 25th of July 1974…
Some Turkish Cypriots from the village had told them that she might have been buried in one of the wells or in the fertilizer in her own garden, so Dora would point out the wells…
Later on this year, CMP would carry out excavations in the closed well in the yard of the house but would find nothing…
There were also rumours that she had been killed in the street…
There were rumours that she was buried in the fertilizer in her garden and then the fertilizer removed from the garden…
More investigation needs to be done and we need to go back to the village together with Dora again to speak with her Turkish Cypriot friends from her childhood to see if they have seen or heard anything…
Theodora Kallis was a poet – whomever she would see, she would say "Which poem shall I recite for you?" She was reading the Cypriot popular poems…
Theodora had given birth to 14 children but only three had stayed alive… Only two sons and a daughter had remained alive… They too are gone now, only the grandchildren remain to remember her… She had been 93 years old when she "disappeared" from the village…
We will continue our investigations and let's hope that we can find more information about both Mrs. Xenou and Theodora Savva Kallis in order to help find their possible burial sites, so that we can help the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to do excavations and try to find their remains…
If you know anything that you would like to share with me, with or without your name, please call me on my mobile CYTA phone at 99 966518.
22.11.2018
Photo: The missing women of Agios Ermolaos, Lutfiye Ahmet and Theodora Kallis Savva and Dora the granddaughter holding the photo of her missing grandmother...
*** Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 16th of December 2018, Sunday. A series of articles were published in YENİDÜZEN newspaper in Turkish on my pages entitled "Cyprus: The Untold Stories" on the 18, 19 and 20 October 2018 and here are the links:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/ayermolanin-kayip-kibrisli-kadinlari-icin-kazilar-13094yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/ayermolada-bir-kayip-sahistan-geride-kalanlara-ulasildi-13099yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/ayermolada-ksenu-hanimi-koye-kontrole-gelen-bir-kibrisliturk-polis-oldurmustu-13104yy.htm
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