Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
My dear Sheniz,
You were a victim of that horrible massacre when you were barely four years old.
Your mother Fatma Arif who was 43 years old, your sister Sevim who was 18, your sister Seval who was 13, your brother Huseyin of 11 years old, your brother Goksel who was 10, your brother Yuksel who was 9 years old and your little sister Hayriye who was barely six months' old and you, all of you were killed in that horrible crime committed by EOKA-B on the 14th of August 1974 in Maratha…
Seven kids and a mother… All of them were victims to this horrible crime…
Your mother's mother, that is your dear grandmother Zalihe Huseyin was also killed in this crime.
From your closest circle of family, a whole family of nine persons, including you were annihilated.
When your dear father Arif Halil Altinbardak found out about this massacre and when he realized that his whole family was killed, I cannot even imagine how he felt…
My dear Sheniz,
Unfortunately your father will not be able to see your and your sisters' funeral because he passed away this year… He could not make it to your funeral…
My dear Sheniz,
If you lived, you would have been 48 years old now… You would have got to know our world, maybe you would marry and have kids, maybe you would travel abroad for holidays and maybe you would goκ to the seaside on hot summer days with your husband and kids and would swim…
You would raise your head and look at the stars…
Maybe you would make pastry to make bourekia and pitta, maybe you would put potatoes and meat in the oven, maybe you would make yahni and koupepia and maybe you would cook the best cakes for your kids…
Maybe you would be a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher… Maybe you would live abroad and would only visit Cyprus during holidays, who knows?
Who knows what you will be, how your life would have developed… Who knows what sorts of dreams you would run after and what you would want to do…
You never had that chance… They took the opportunity from you to run after your dreams. You were killed at the age of four and buried in a mass grave.
You were killed in a war that you did not understand and you did not know the reason why you were killed and buried in a mass grave together with your mother and your brothers and sisters… Even though you had no "sin", your little four-year-old body was pushed in a mass grave…
The mass graves created by EOKA-B in Maratha-Sandallaris-Aloa created so much fury that nobody could stop what would happen afterwards… This time, some Turkish Cypriots with the pretext of "revenge" started creating new mass graves and killing civilian Greek Cypriots and burying them in those mass graves…
The massacres at Maratha-Sandallaris –Aloa triggered such terrible things that the "partition project" would be complete with stains of blood in the minds of the people… While your little body was laying down in a mass grave and while your dear father was crying for you and for your mom and for your brothers and sisters, other innocent people were being killed elsewhere on our island and buried in other mass graves…
In Chatoz (Tziaos) they filled with the bodies of Greek Cypriots the dirty water well in the yard of the mosque… In the Galatia lake, they created two mass graves and buried 17 civilian Greek Cypriots… When other Greek Cypriots heard of these things, they too began on a "revenge" spree and they too would create yet other mass graves like in Petrofani village where they killed old, innocent Turkish Cypriots and buried them in a mass grave… And the killing spree continued like that and our island turned into an island of mass graves and massacres…
Was this called "war"?
No dear Sheniz, this was no "war" but "opportunism" – whoever had the opportunity, killed. Some EOKA-B members and some Turkish Cypriots who got the "opportunity", killed and raped and robbed and stole… After the rapes, in order not to leave behind any witnesses they would kill all those around…
"Revenge" could not be a "pretext" because those they killed had nothing to do with those who had killed you and your family – they killed people who were never involved in such massacres – they were civilians, prisoners of war…
No, this was no "war" since people were not shooting at each other from military posts across each other… The EOKA-B members did not participate in the "war" anyway, instead they would choose to go to Aloa, catch some animals, kill them and make "souvla", eating and drinking and getting drunk… They had arrested all the men of the three villages – Maratha-Sandallaris-Aloa – and had sent them to Limassol as prisoners of war and now they were roaming these villages. They were not anywhere near Kyrenia where the "war" was in full swing, they were in these three innocent Turkish Cypriot villages pouring their dirt on these villages… And in the end, in order to cover their own dirt, they killed everyone – 126 women and children and old people except only a few who manged to hide and save their own lives… Yes, they killed every single person, everyone…
They did not make any differentiation when killing women and children and burying you in mass graves…
Dear Sheniz,
You were not the youngest child killed in this massacre – there were smaller children and babies killed in these three villages by EOKA-B. The youngest was a 16 days old baby called Selden Ali Osman and her mother Mualla, her sisters Gulden and Ozlem were all killed and buried in a mass grave in Aloa… Ozlem was younger than you, she was barely 2 years old. Gulden was four years old, just like you. Their mother Mualla Ali Osman was only 36 years old. Her mother Shifa Hasan and her father Hasan Kara Huseyin were also killed. Six persons from this family – including two children and a baby…
My dear Sheniz,
There is no one to take your coffin from your close family anymore… One of your close relatives takes your coffin and your sisters' coffins and we bury you on the 20th of December 2018 Thursday at the Maratha-Sandallaris Cemetery for Martyrs. Your remains have been identified by DNA tests by the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee after their exhumation of the mass graves in Maratha… The mass grave at Aloa hasn't been exhumed yet so these funerals will continue for many years to come…
On the 20th of December 2018, we bury a total of 15 Turkish Cypriots, including you and your sisters – they were all killed in the same massacre in Maratha… There were exhumations in three different burial sites where CMP found remains of 89 "missing" persons. You are in the fourth group that we are burying after DNA tests… The first group of four Turkish Cypriots were buried in August 2017 and 6 persons in December 2017. In September this year, we had buried another 12 "missing" persons in this cemetery…
Now in this fourth funeral at Maratha, as the 15 little coffins are lined up in the yard of the mosque, we say goodbye to you with our tears…
You become a teardrop and roll across our cheeks…
We cry for the days you have never lived…
We cry for the sea that you never saw…
We cry for the stars that you could never look up…
We cry because you could not run with joy from school to your house, having learned how to read and write…
We cry because you were never allowed to grow up…
And we curse those who have killed such a young child as you…
For many years now, we have been struggling so that no such crimes will be committed on this island – we write, we make activities, we try to do everything possible for peace…
We shall continue to do that…
Because the only way out for all of us is peace, not tension…
I would have loved to hug you my dear Sheniz on this island where there is no peace and where we are forced to live under cease-fire conditions…
I would have loved to hold your hand and would have loved to show you how beautiful our earth can also be…
You faced the most horrible face of humans – you faced the fascists' massacre and your life ended.
Those of us who remain behind still struggle for a better island and a better world with this sadness inside us…
So that other kids would not have to go through what you have gone through…
I shall always carry you in my heart dear Sheniz, always in my soul, always beside me…
I shall never forget you – those who live on this island owe you at least that, I believe…
You our little girl, our little butterfly, our little baby who could never live her life…
You the beautiful pearl that we have lost…
You the purest and cleanest form of humanity having had to face the most horrible face of humanity, our child…
Our Sheniz…
Many Sheniz like you…
18.12.2018
Photos: The 15 Turkish Cypriots killed by EOKA-B in Maratha whose funeral we attended on 20th of December 2018...
And the photo of the four year old Sheniz Arif killed by EOKA-B...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper in Greek on the 6th of January 2019, Sunday. A similar article was published in Turkish in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper on my pages entitled "Cyprus: The Untold Stories" on the 19th of December 2018 and the link to the article in Turkish is:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/sevgili-seniz-13380yy.htm
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