Sevgul Uludag
Caramel_cy@yahoo.com
99 966518
No, it wasn't a scene from the movie of Audrey Tautou, `A Very Long Engagement` where Mathilde, searches for her fiancé, who might have been killed in the battlefield during World War 1. Audrey Tautou, whom we know from her movie `Amelie`, in this movie, plays Mathilde, who with the help of a private investigator, tries to find out what happened to her fiancé. Instead of Mathilde, the woman I go to see is Ayshe from Potamia, now living in Argaki (Akchay), who has been searching for her `missing` husband for the last 36 years...
Born in Potamia, her family would flee to Louroudjina for safety after the bloodshed in Ayios Sozomenos (Arpalik) village in early 1964. Five sisters and four brothers, their mother Hatice and father Ahmet would start living as refugees in Louroudjina. They would build refugee houses outside the village and they would move there... Their life would continue in Louroudjina...
One of Ayshe's brothers would go to Ayios Sozomenos with the animals of their family to live there and she would go with him to help out. There, she would meet Mehmet Hasan Choban, the son of `Karga` (`The Crow`) whose family would return to Ayios Sozomenos to repair their house and stay and tend their animals... There would be four or five families living in Ayios Sozomenos, a deserted village where sunbrick houses which would crumble under the sun and the rain... A very poor village, its main population in Louroudjina living as refugees, left to destruction...
Ayshe and Mehmet would get engaged in June 1974 and would go to Nicosia for the civilian marriage `nikah`. They would plan to have their wedding the following year, in 1975, after they would build a house in Ayios Sozomenos where Mehmet's family had land. Plans would be drawn up for the house they would build but things would not go as planned, leaving Ayshe alone in this world, `missing` her husband Mehmet...
On the 14th of August 1974, another villager from Ayios Sozomenos, Huseyin, would set out to go to Petrofani village nearby, where his sister had been engaged. On the way he would be arrested by some Greek Cypriots. Huseyin's father, Djemal would go to Piroi village to the police station to tell the Greek Cypriot police that his son had gone `missing` with his tractor but he too, would be arrested. They would take them to Larnaca to beat up and torture and ask about `guns` and `leaders` of their village... There had been no guns at Ayios Sozomenos, Mehmet did not even have a shotgun for hunting, he had no connection with the Turkish Cypriot underground organization TMT but Huseyin and his father, would `admit` under torture that `There were guns and Mehmet was the leader of TMT in the village...`
So K. from Larnaca, a well known Greek Cypriot who had been involved in the disappearance of some Turkish Cypriots back in 1963, would set out for Ayios Sozomenos in a landrover, to `capture` Mehmet. He would go to Potamia to take with him two young Greek Cypriots, G. and A. and all together they would go to Ayios Sozomenos, to the house of Mehmet.
`He had been ill that day and was lying in bed as they came` Ayshe remembers, `I was there... Huseyin too, was in the landrover... The shock for me was seeing G. and A. coming to arrest my husband. We grew up together in Potamia, G.'s father was a good friend of my father, my mother would make trahana soup and he would come early morning to have soup with my father and they would go hunting together... Many times, we would sit at the same table to eat, in their house... He shouldn't have done that to a co-villager, he knew us, he knew perfectly well that my husband was innocent. In Ayios Sozomenos, there were no guns, no `organization`, no `leader`. We were all minding our own business and we had had very good relations with Greek Cypriots from surrounding villages. People from Athienou (Kiracikeuy) would come to get our milk, everyone would come to my mother-in-law's house and she would offer them food and hospitality. Whether it was rural constable or high officials, they would come visit her since hers was the only house with a proper sitting room where she could accept guests... My mother-in-law liked to have a clean and proper house... They all knew us... I still can't believe what they did to my husband and how the father of G. did nothing to prevent them from taking him...`
They would take Mehmet to `show them the guns` but there had been no guns to show so Mehmet would try to escape so they would shoot him on his leg... Then they would put him in the landrover and according to Ayshe would stop at Potamia at the coffeeshop where she says, some people saw her wounded husband in the landrover while K., G. and A. would buy cigarettes.
The moment her husband would be taken from their house, she would run to inform the UN in the village. The UN car would go looking and would find Mehmet in the landrover, `but the UN was not allowed to come near them` she explains.
Later on there would be stories that Mehmet had been taken to Larnaca hospital for `treatment` but no records would show he had ever been there and nurses or doctors would not remember such a person being brought in. Mehmet would `disappear` from the face of earth...
She would listen very carefully to every single name of the prisoners of war as they were being exchanged but would not hear Mehmet's name... As she would realize that he is `missing`, she would get terribly sick, crying and waiting, waiting and crying, hoping that he is locked up somewhere and would come back...
Ayshe would stay until 1975 in Ayios Sozomenos when one day her brother Altuner would come to take her to the northern part of the island. She would settle with him first in Assia to tend 200 goats together with him and five years later, as her brother would leave Cyprus for England, she would settle in Argaki with some sheep, to live with her mother and father, to work and to wait...
She has beautiful greyish green eyes, slim like a young girl, still waiting to know the fate of her husband. She could have got married but she says she never thought of marrying again.
`I was only 22 years old but all these years, I waited for him to come back...`
She is 63 years old now and she lives with her mother, Hatice...
If anyone knows of the fate of Mehmet Hasan Choban from Ayios Sozomenos, the least we can do is to tell Ayshe, who could never have the wedding she was dreaming of, who could never build the house in Ayios Sozomenos that she was dreaming of, who could never have children since her husband is `missing`. If anyone from Potamia remembers anything about the fate of this young man, Mehmet, please call me at 99 966518... Perhaps we can find his remains so Ayshe can at least bury him and at least have a grave to visit her husband...
Nothing will change the past but we can do humanitarian gestures to change the future...
14.9.2010
(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper in September 2010…
Photo: The "missing" Mehmet Hasan Karga…
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