The Christmas memory of a child…

The Christmas memory of a child…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

Dr. Hale Erel from Kaymakli (Omorphita) writes her childhood memories of the dark days of December 1963 and later on of 1974… She was barely four years old in 1974 and she remembers all the details that made a mark on her heart and soul… In her real life story called `A Christmas Memory` she remembers how they were hiding in their house in Omorphita… I want to share her story with you… Here is what Dr. Hale Erel writes:
`There is a knock on the door. We start listening intently. It's too early in the morning – as though if it was later, anyone would come to visit.
`No!` shouts my father, `don't open it!`
My mother, as calm as always asks:
`Who would come, Bey?`
I am under the table.
I am not sleeping but I can't get out of there, for a long time I live there… We are in Kaymakli, in our house, it is end of December 1963.
Another knock on the door, just a single knock.
`Let's open it` my mother says.
`Noooo!` says my father, `It must be the wind, maybe it swept something towards the door!`
There is fear in their eyes, they look at each other. Two `leventis` come in the room, two young boys who haven't yet grown beards and who had to grow up too quickly. My brothers… The house is overcrowded, I am alone under the table. I am barely 4 years old… Probably I learnt what loneliness means from those days…
There is a long silence, I am afraid, then another knock on the door. It is clear that the door is being knocked. This sound is not the sound of that cold winter, neither the sound of the wind.
`I will open it` my mother says, `someone is knocking at the door!`
`No!` my father says, `we have children!`
He can't finish his sentence, the door opens.
`Who is there?` says my mother quietly, as though no one to hear… `Who is there?`
`It's me neighbour, it's me…`
The voice comes from afar with a Greek accent, like a whisper, as though no one should hear…
My mother asking again, `Who is there?`
I hear my mother's whisper but no one else does. I hear the voice answering her from where I am, under the kitchen table in the kitchen, near the kitchen door.
My mother with no more patience sticks her head out of the door.
`What is it neighbour?` she says, moving her right hand with a gesture as though asking what is going on.
I cannot endure it any longer and I get out from under the table to go and grab the skirt of my mother, I am too small and can't even reach her waist. I look from the door towards the garden, there is a man crouching almost invisible watching us from the fence. He makes a sign with his finger, putting it towards his nose and mouth, making a `be silent` sign, showing a basket on the floor to my mother. I see it too.
`Neighbour` he says, `today is Christmas, children should not go hungry, take this, my children ate, let yours eat as well…`
My mother lifts up her hand again, she is afraid to speak it seems, she signs with her hand – actually she is thanking him.
She looks back at my father, my father is standing as though saying `What are you doing? Come back inside!` but no one is listening to him. My mother is holding my hand now.
`Come on Hale` she says, `go and get that basket!`
The kitchen door is only open as much as I can pass, I look at the basket standing next to the fence in the garden. I don't even think if I can lift it up, I sense that I am growing up. After so many days for the first time someone has asked something from me and I walk, I hold the basket from its handle and start dragging it towards the house. It is too heavy but since I feel that I grew up, with that strength and courage, I drag the basket towards the kitchen door.
My mother leans out and takes the basket from my hands, she looks left and right, controlling if anyone is there, if anyone has seen what is happening and we go in, close the door and lock it again. It's as though the lock protects us from all evil…
It is Christmas day. We open the basket. Inside the basket are colourful eggs. There is halloumi and how many! There is chorek and bread and even olives. My mother looks at my father, my father is looking at my mother…
`A good person` says my mother, `he thought about our kids, while we sleep hungry, he could not eat…`
The eggs are coloured, bringing a little bit colour to the dark days.
It is Christmas day, 25th of December. We are prisoners in our own house, we hid in our house so no one would harm us, we are overcrowded in the house. The Greek Cypriot neighbour behind our house across towards the right knows that we are in the house and knows that we are hiding. We have been neighbours for many years, we had our morning coffees together, the children playing together. He did not forget us on this Christmas morning, knocking on our door like he did on every Pasha, every special day and he put aside something for us, so that the children should be happy… We hide but from whom I don't know, someone frightened us with death, why I don't know that either, why we are afraid and from whom, I don't know that either but I know that we are not hiding from our Greek Cypriot neighbour, I know that we are not afraid of our Greek Cypriot neighbour. Really why did we hide and from whom? With whom did we fight, who tried to kill us? If not us
and our neighbours who were these people?
For a short time it is a festive time in the house, we had almost run out of food and now we have a little bit more. As always, first the children are fed. I choose a yellow egg, from then on yellow becomes the colour I love most. I get to meet coloured eggs on that day.
Wherever you are neighbour, be good, be very good, if you have passed away from this earth, be the light, rest in peace…`
If this Greek Cypriot neighbour is alive, Hale would very much like to meet him and his family…
(Hale is one of the five children of Dervish Erel who had been a carpenter… I had written about his family in POLITIS back in May last year… Dervish Erel was a carpenter… He was from Ortakeuy, his wife Bahire from Istinco-Paphos… Around 1955-56 he had bought land in Kaymakli and built a house and they had moved there… This had been a mixed area, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots living together and the Erel family had Greek Cypriot neighbours, both good and bad as it happens in all the communities of the earth.
Dervish Erel had five kids so he had bought land and built five houses, one house for each kid… He was a hardworking man and since the big house they were living in was built with cement, when the intercommunal fighting began on the 21st of December 1963, around 40 Turkish Cypriots would come to take shelter in this house… Most of the Turkish Cypriots from other areas of Kaymakli (Omorphita) had left for Hamit Mandrez but the Turkish Cypriots from this area could not leave – not that they did not try… They tried to leave twice with cars but the Greek Cypriot police would intervene and stop them and told them to go back home, they could not leave… This was happening around the area where there is a bus terminal now in Kaymakli. So they had to go back and continued to stay in the house of Dervish Erel. There were women with small babies who needed milk but there was no milk, no food whatsoever… Bahire, the wife of Dervish Erel would make pittas
from flour since they could not find bread. The good Greek Cypriot neighbours of the Erel family would try to help, bringing to them eggs, bread and other stuff to eat while the bad neighbours would be shooting at the kids playing in the street as Ali, one of the sons of Dervish and brother of Hale, remembers… One day Sampson himself together with 20-30 of his men with machine guns would come and surround the house, they would take all males above 14-15 years old away… Sampson and his men would take this group inside Omorphita to a spot and line them up against a wall… They would give a cigarette each – the last cigarette to smoke before they were executed or at least that had been the impression they wanted to create. But the Turkish Cypriot group had been `lucky` since just at that moment two British women officers were passing by and saw the scene and started a big argument with the Sampson group about the Turkish Cypriot prisoners. Perhaps
the group was `saved` because of this coincidence of the British passing through there – the group would be taken to the Regis Ice Cream Factory and they would be beaten severely… Later on, a Greek Cypriot police sergeant would accompany the group back to the house of Dervish Erel, telling them that `They cannot leave, they should stay where they are…` Perhaps because of the British women officers' worries, a British soldier would be sent to sit in front of the house in a jeep 24 hours a day and sort of `guard` them…
Ali remembers that around the 10th of January 1964, there came a truck to take them away… The truck was accompanied by a British jeep and they were told, `We will take you to inside Nicosia…`)

10.1.2015

Photo: Hale Erel as a young child...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 25th of January, 2015 Sunday.

If our children don’t know each other…

If our children don't know each other…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

Michalis Michaelides was born in Ay Yiorgi in Famagusta, a small village near the Karaolos camp… He grew up in that village, going around with his father in their truck selling watermelon and other vegetables to the villages around Famagusta… His father, a PEO member had many Turkish Cypriot friends in different villages and also in Famagusta. In Famagusta, he had one friend called Mustafa and Michalis's father would visit him often, they would eat and drink and little Michalis would play with the children of Mustafa: Huseyin and Ayshe…
Years would pass by peacefully for his family and in 1971 he would get married to Spathariko… In his wedding not only Greek Cypriots but also the Turkish Cypriot friends of his father would come to eat and dance and celebrate the young boy's happy day… Mustafa and his family was there…
After his wedding the young, 18 year old Michalis went to do his military service. He was serving at Diorios and was on leave when the war broke out in 1974 – Michalis had had a minor operation and that's why they had given him a leave of two weeks… His leave ended on the 20th of July 1974 and that was the day the war struck our island… He went to report back to the army in Famagusta – his wife had washed his uniform and it had not dried yet so he went in civilian clothes… He had no gun, no uniform… Telling all this to our dear friend, journalist Huseyin Halil (who does the only bicommunal, bi-lingual TV programmes in Cyprus for RIK called `Under the Same Sky` together with his colleague Chrystalla Avgousti), Michalis thinks that not wearing a uniform probably saved his life…
`They put us on trucks and sent us outside the walled city of Famagusta` he says… The war planes were bombing Famagusta but where they were stationed, it was more quiet. They were being shelled and they were firing back… Then his sergeant gave orders for the group to go towards the new Nicosia-Famagusta road – the road had just been built and it was new as Michalis remembers… They were a group of 13 soldiers, Michalis Michaelides the only one not in a uniform. So they went on the new road to see if the Turkish army was coming… They saw tanks coming towards Famagusta… On top of one tank was a Greek flag – they were surprised and started being suspicious since they had heard nothing on the radio or wireless about any Greek tanks… `At that time we could not think clearly on that` he says and as the tanks approached, they saw the Turkish soldiers behind the tanks… The Turkish soldiers arrested them and Michalis says they were beaten up real
hard, that he would never forget the beating of that day… They were using their guns to beat them and Michalis still carries the scars on his legs from those beatings…
They took them to Varosha – Varosha was deserted as Michalis remembers:
`They had gathered a lot of prisoners of war` Michalis says, `Old and young, civilian and military… Then they surrounded them and started separating them – old people on one side, soldiers on another side… They took the ones with me to the gardens of Perchanas – we heard gun shots soon after… I did not see with my own eyes them being killed but I heard the shots… Then afterwards we heard the noise of the bulldozers… I don't know… Because I was wearing civilian clothes, they had put me together with other civilians… That's how I was saved. They put is in cars and sent us to the Pavlides garage in Nicosia… We started waiting there – there were many others in that garage… We didn't know what would happen to us… I don't remember how long we stayed there… After a very long time some trucks came to Pavlides garage and they started loading us on the trucks – there were rumours that we were going to be taken to Turkey… I
was in the last row… We were the last to be loaded to the trucks and then a Turkish Cypriot officer who was about my age started saying something to the other officer there in Turkish. I could understand Turkish a little bit – after the Turkish Cypriot officer's intervention, the other officer took me by the collar and took me out of the line… I turned around and looked at him but did not recognize him. He had said that I had killed his mother and father and he wanted to kill me with his own hands! Then two soldiers grabbed me and put me in a landrover that belonged to the Greek Cypriot army – they had taken this landrover over. My hands had been tied and they threw me in the landrover like a bag of potatoes… The landrover moved, the soldiers wanted to get in the landrover as well but the Turkish Cypriot officer told them that he didn't need them. The landrover moved… I was wondering where we were going to… The officer did not speak a
single word to me. He was driving the landrover and I was sitting at the back. I was wondering where we were going to… I had a thousand thoughts in my mind… I was thinking of my family – we left Nicosia and were almost entering Famagusta that the officer stopped the car. I said to myself, `Oh my God! This is the end of me!`
He opened the back door and took me out of the landrover.
`Don't kill me` I said to him, `I have family…`
He turned around and looked at me:
`Who said anything about killing you Michali mou…` he said.
He took his cap off his head and when I looked at him I realized this was my friend Huseyin, the son of Mustafa who was a close friend of my father… The one who was saving me was my childhood friend Huseyin…`
If the father of Michalis was not friends with Mustafa, a Turkish Cypriot from Famagusta, their children would never meet and play pirilli in Famagusta, would never spend time and would never become childhood friends… If the father of Michalis did not make any friends from the Turkish Cypriot community, perhaps there would be no one to save the life of Michalis…
What Michalis Michaelides told in 2011 to Huseyin Halil from RIK is important if we want to draw any lesson from the past – since I watched the video I have been thinking about it:
Unless our children start getting to know one another, we cannot build a culture of peace on this island…

4.1.2015

Photo: Michalis Michalides talking to Huseyin Halil on RIK TV...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 18th of January 2015, Sunday.

Making darkness brighter...

Making darkness brighter…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

The news of the European Citizen's Prize to be given to me by the European Parliament brings me hundreds of messages of congratulations from readers and friends from both parts of the dividing line, from Mexico, from the US, from London, Athens and Istanbul and from all over Europe… It is my readers who have created the avalanche of information about `untold stories` of our past, it is my editors from POLITIS and YENIDUZEN, Dionisis Dionisiou and Cenk Mutluyakali who have created enough space for us to publish all this information, it is my translator from English to Greek, my dear friend Gina Chappa who made it `happen` because without her heartfelt translations, I would not be able to speak to my Greek Cypriot readers in Greek every week on Sundays in my column published in POLITIS newspaper… I thank AKEL MEPs Takis Hadjigeorgiou and Neoclis Sylikiotis for proposing my name to the European Parliament for this prize… Takis, a dear friend and a
good reader of my articles have already helped us in our search for `missing persons` in the Paphos area…
I need to mention my dear friends, relatives of `missing` like Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia, like Maria Georgiadou who have always helped me in my investigations, I need to mention my dear son and my husband for their unwavering support during all the difficulties and threats I got, I need to mention Xenophon Kallis from whom I have learnt so many aspects of how to make investigations – he has always put the relatives of `missing persons` above all as the priority – that the suffering of the relatives must be put to an end… He above all has helped pave the way for humanity above everything else… He showed us that humanity and a humanitarian perspective must win in this very sensitive area of pain and suffering… I need to thank Murat Soysal and Okan Oktay from the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee for their help during my investigations and if I want to mention names of readers, it would make a huge list – thanks to all! My dear friend,
journalist Andreas Paraschos, I must mention – he too have been giving his full support to my work throughout all these years as he had passed through the same venues himself many years ago…
And most touching are the calls I receive… A woman reader called Fatma calls me from the farm she is working at and says:
`I have been reading you from the day 373 onwards and now you are on day 2500 something – I keep all the newspapers, everything you have written… Now that I am on the farm taking care of horses and other animals, we cannot find the newspaper here but thank God my neighbours buy YENIDUZEN and keep them for me so I can follow...`
She invites me to go to the farm and visit her, to look at her goats and horses… She is over 70 years old and gives her blessing to me over the phone… As a retired nurse, we had spoken only once some years ago and now she calls to say how happy she is for me to receive such an important prize…
The messages over the phone are also touching, particularly one from Larnaka: One of my readers, Kyriacos whom I never managed to meet but who always sends me messages that help me to carry on says `You make darkness brighter…` and his words stay with me for the rest of the week… Perhaps these are the `little` `big` things that make me happy most…
More important more calls come for asking me to go so they can show some possible burial sites…
One of these calls come from Sinda, a village in Mesaoria… Sinda is close to Lysi and the old man who calls me from Sinda wants me to go there so he can show me two possible burial sites… I call the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to arrange to go there and meet the old man…
The old man though having a relative `missing` from 1964 has helped us to find the burial sites of Greek Cypriots `missing` from the area… One of my Greek Cypriot readers had helped to find where his relative had been buried outside Lysi together with two other Turkish Cypriots…
We go and meet him and drive outside Sinda, close to the `Cave of the Horses` where executions of some Greek Cypriot `missing` had taken place… But his story is not about the `Cave of the Horses` - two soldiers hiding in this area were caught and killed, he explains and were put in a well in this area… We go with Xenophon Kallis, Murat Soysal and Okan Oktay, officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to investigate this possible burial site…
Then the old man wants us to show another spot – this is on the road between Kondea and Sinda – in this area others also showed some wells as possible burial sites but nothing was found… The old man shows us a well and tells us the story of the two or three shepherds from Lysi who were trying to leave in 1974 – that they had a big flock of sheep and some Turkish Cypriots, in order to steal the flock killed them and buried them in a well… That one of the Greek Cypriot shepherds wanted water and took water from the well and before he could drink it he was shot and killed and together with the other two shepherds buried in the well…
The whole area has such a quiet beauty – Mesaoria is like that, always… It stretches out with a flat beauty, here and there some eucalyptus trees, the land so green now after a few rains, occasionally a small house – two storey – as they used to build them in the past… The top room that had windows open on all sides to allow winds coming from any side… Tiny houses of Mesaoria that are disappearing now…
We thank the old man and go to his house for coffee… His wife had been a seamstress and she shows us the photograph from her wedding – she had sewn her own wedding dress, elaborate with chiffon and ribbons, spread out at the studio to show how nice the skirt is… She has curtains in the kitchen dating back a hundred years old perhaps from the silk her mother had woven and she had embroidered these curtains from that silk… She has her diploma on the wall – she had attended a school of sewing in Vatyli – two Turkish Cypriot sisters had opened a school there for teaching how to become a seamstress and they would sew dresses and wedding gowns and slowly learn to become a seamstress…
We drink our coffee and say our goodbyes to the old man and his wife and head for Famagusta – Varosha actually, the part that is `open` and settled by those who came from Paphos… We go to find Sema Kilinch who shows us the area where she and others thought had been a mass grave… She lives close to Leyla Kiralp and I call Leyla to come out so we can see her…
The possible burial site that both Sema and Leyla are talking about is in the middle of the road – previously there had been no road here, it was just fields and gardens… Next to the road is a garden surrounded by a stone wall – when they were first settled here, there had been a very bad stench coming from the garden – there had been rumours that some Greek Cypriots had been buried there… We are in Agia Paraskevi area of Varosha – previously I had shown this area together with Leyla and now Sema is also showing these possible burial sites… We hope this will help the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to make deeper investigations in this area and see if people who lived in Agia Paraskevi could also help in case they might remember something…
I thank everyone who is trying to help in this humanitarian task of trying to find out the unspoken truths of our past – they are the ones who `make darkness brighter…`


29.12.2014

Photo:View from the garden with stone walls and barbed wire...

(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 11th of January 2015, Sunday.

`The children who didn’t grow up`…

`The children who didn't grow up`…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Τel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

`The children who didn't grow up…` is a poem by Aydjan Sarachoghlu, a friend whom I have known for at least 35 years… Aydjan has always been in the forefront of the struggle for peace and reunification, for democracy, for human rights, for a better life on our land and on earth… We went to demonstrations of peace together with her… I remember her as a very young woman marching in the streets for women's rights, for peace, for our children to grow up in a better place… I remember their small house in the block of social housing, going there and having coffee – she got married with another friend from the same progressive movement, our journalist friend Derman Sarachoghlu with whom I used to work together in the YENIDUZEN newspaper… He too had had a tough life, spent in struggle – back in the 80s and 90s, it would prove almost impossible to get a job if you were from the progressive movement – the regime in the northern part of the
island would make sure that you would definitely suffer economically, psychologically and try to push you to leave, to go away… Derman and Aydjan as a young, married couple with a kid eventually had to choose to go to London to survive – perhaps they would have better conditions there for their kid to grow up…
They would emigrate to London but their hearts and minds would always remain here in Cyprus – from afar they would write, they would connect, they would follow and try to be a part of life in Cyprus…
Recently Aydjan organized an event with Turkish Cypriot poets and cartoonists from Cyprus… It took place in London where cartoonists had an exhibition of their cartoons about peace and poets read their poetry…
It was during these activities for peace and reunification that Aydjan planned to read the poem called `The children who didn't grow up`… In fact on the 5th and 6th of December 2014, she did read this poem in the events she organized as the Cypriot Artists' Platform… But on the 7th of December, 2014 one of the schools where the artists were to perform asked to `check` these poems and told Aydjan that she should not read this poem. The school administration in a closed meeting discussed what to do in case she does try to read the poem and they spoke of putting the students in rooms and not allowing them to get out so that they cannot hear her poem! So the poets and cartoonists decided not to go to that school…
The poem called `The children who didn't grow up` is dedicated to the nine year old Yiannis Souppouris who is `missing` from Palekythro and to all the other innocent children who had been killed…

The children who didn't grow up…

Aydjan Sarachoghlu

Your photo in front of me
You are still at the age when this photo was taken
They did not give you a chance to grow up
The child who didn't grow up…

Your photo in front of me…
Your eyes shining full of hope,
Your face has endless happiness,
Your lips like brightness…

Your photo in front of me…
The child from Palekythro, Yiannis…
The child who couldn't have enough childhood, enough games,
The child who couldn't have enough of his home, of his school…

Your photo is in front of me… Was it war or was it revenge,
Was it a murder or a mass killing
Was it barbarism that you lived through?
You couldn't understand either could you?
I couldn't either Yiannis…
I couldn't understand either…

I couldn't fit it in my mind, in my heart.
Each time I close my eyes, I see you…
Greek Cypriot, Turkish Cypriot, all children
All the children of my country who didn't grow up
I remember you…
You are all innocent and surprised…
You all look into my eyes
Some of you in Greek,
Some of you in Turkish….

30 April, 2014 – London.

Aydjan's husband Derman Sarachoglou also has a few words to say about this poem:
`The poem was written by my life comrade Aydjan. I am proud of her for having human values. This poem created quite a big stir behind closed doors in recent days when it was read out loud in front of the public. Unfortunately the administration of an `Education Facility` discussed in an `urgent meeting` how to lock up all Turkish Cypriot kids in the rooms in order to prevent them from hearing this poem! It's nothing like you think… This is not happening in Africa or in a remote village in Asia. It all happened in the capital of England, London, a member of EU… I republish this poem in order to see if these people who think of locking up kids in rooms to prevent them from hearing it have left any kind of feeling ashamed of themselves… And I publish that photo of the child with bright eyes who had this poem written by the poet… Those who tried to ban this poem: You are so blind that you cannot see in these eyes of Yiannis also the Turkish Cypriot
children killed in 1974 in Maratha-Sandallaris-Aloa… You are so much without feeling that you cannot sense them in this poem…
The ones who are trying to make the poet pay a price for this poem should know that we are not going to stand down… You will have this shame forever but the poet will remain HUMAN and continue her struggle with human dignity… Because trying to demonize this poem and calling the poet a `traitor` among Turkish Cypriots is actually a crime, a human rights abuse, a racist propaganda which is punishable in the United Kingdom…`

WHO IS THE BOY IN THE POEM AND IN THE PHOTO?
Yiannis Souppouris was nine years old and was among the women and children massacred in Palekythro by some Turkish Cypriots in 1974. He is still `missing`. He is the brother of Petros Souppouris.
His father Andreas Souppouris was 48 years old, his mother Areti 39 years old, his aunt Thekla was 45 years old when killed. Little Dimitris was barely 4-5 years old and his sister Julia only 3 years old when they were killed. Yiannis too was killed in this massacre but his remains were not found in the mass grave…
Three or four Turkish Cypriots had gone from Epicho and probably Mora villages to Palekythro and had stolen the cows of the Souppouris family and the next day they had gone to the Souppouris house to rape and massacre everyone who gathered in that house. There had been 21 persons in that house. 17 of them were killed. Little Costas Souppouris had escaped and hid and stayed alive while 13 year old George Liasi was wounded but remained alive. He had also managed to identify the ones who had done this massacre. The big sister of George, Yianoulla was heavily wounded and had to be treated in East Germany for six months – only after very complicated surgery she could walk. She too had lost her two year old son – the child was among those massacred… Yianoulla's mother, sisters, grandma and grandpa were also massacred.
After the identification of the 13 year old kid George Liassi, the four Turkish Cypriots were arrested and were to be tried in military court in Mia Milia… But the authorities of Epicho would run to Mia Milia and would `convince` the Turkish soldiers to let them go free…
Aydjan's poem is dedicated to the children killed in this massacre, to Yiannis who is still `missing` and to all the innocent children who have been killed…

13.12.2014

Photo: The `missing` Yiannis Souppouris from Palekythro...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 4th of January 2014, Sunday.

Cooking with love…

Cooking with love…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

The house is nice and warm, I boil chicken to make stock, to make soup, to make macaroni, to make rice… In the refrigerator, different jams are ready and waiting to be used… The cats sleep curled up like a ball around us, close to the fire… All, except the little blond cat who sleeps with all his claws up in the air… Candles burn, candles that sooth us, that show us that there is light somewhere, that it is not all dark, it is not all gloomy, that there is still hope for the future as long as we are alive and can dream on…
My friends make Christmas cakes for me, kourabiye for my son – soon he will be here for the New Year and all my friends will rush to cook for him… Ferah will wrap vine leaves to make dolma, Okan will cook a yogurt soup with tiny meat balls in it, all the restaurant owners who have been asking about when he will get back will start cooking liver on the charcoal for him or fish soup or wild mushrooms and agrelli with eggs… Everyone is expecting him home so they can cook for him…
Recently one of my dear friends, an archaeologist who has been `digging` for the `missing persons` have had an operation… I visited her and a few days later called her to see what she can eat so I could cook for her…
`Nooo!` she said, `The refrigerator is sooo full of food, you cannot believe… My mother, my sisters all brought something so I don't need any food… You know what? I think in Cyprus, we express ourselves through food… When we feel sad, we eat… When we feel happy, we eat… When someone is sick, we believe that if we cook for that person, he or she will heal immediately…So food is so central in our lives…`
She too has cooked for me, soups when I get sick and indeed when I drink her soup, I believe I heal more quickly: She puts some chicken, some fresh ginger cut in chunks, a carrot and a potato and some rice and some pepper… It's like a mother's soup to heal the soul, comfort food cooked with love…
Perhaps our obsession with cooking is based on the island we live in: For at least those of us who are alive on this earth, the past half century has been full of trouble, conflict and war, full of uncertainty, full of memories of becoming a refugee, seeing our island being divided, cut into two parts forcefully… Even as a child, my first memories are the shrieking sound of a horn when we had to run into shelters at our neighbourhood and wait there for some hours, sitting stifled in the basement of a restaurant or a basement close the restaurant… Then we had to leave home one night when some soldiers knocked at our door and told us to just go! Go, go, go! Don't look back! Don't try to take anything! So off we went, in the middle of the night, end of December 1963, passing through the children's garden of our neighbourhood in Nicosia with my brother, my mother, my grandmother and grandfather who could not walk fast – I was in my mother's
arms, a five year old kid, sleepy, cold, not knowing and understanding what was happening, my grandfather blind so he could not see and my brother had to help him to walk, my grandmother almost deaf so she could not hear what was being said, confused and frightened… Our street was divided and we had seen how they had put sandbags to divide the street, barrels and a military post to guard it… My brother, young as he was, a student in the lyceum one night while on `guard` there, had been punished: He could not bring himself to stop someone who did not know the `parola`, the `password` for that night…
We had gone to inside the walled city to seek refuge in a relative's house where we slept 25 in a room and there was no food, absolutely no food: You had to fight for food… No toys, no going out, no getting back home… We spent about a month like that and managed to go home, to our own house, to our own garden, to our own kitchen and to our own food…
We experienced 1974 at home – my mother refused to leave the house since we had the bad experience of 1964 becoming refugees even for a short time so she decided to stay… `At least we can cook our own food` she would say… She would dig the garden to find potatoes she had planted and had forgotten about and would be happy: She would cook potatoes, she would cook macaroni – there was no bread, this was war – our house was being shelled and we could not go out. So she would cook pitta for us from flour and we would eat pitta bread…
All her life, my mother made stock of food: We would always have at least three-four packages of rice, lots of macaroni, flour, sugar, canned milk, anything you can think of that she could stock, she would stock… `You never know in Cyprus what might happen` she would say…
`But mom, all the markets are full of food! Why do you buy two okkas of halloumi? We can always buy them…`
`No, no` she would say, `you never know what might happen in Cyprus…`
This uncertainty determined our lives and still determines our lives: We are NOT in control of our own lives in Cyprus as a whole – you never know what might come up next: One day the checkpoints are opened but who knows when some big shot might decide to close them? Who knows when they decide to kick off for tension? Or even `peace`… Nothing is certain except one thing for sure: Cypriots on both sides of the dividing line are in FULL CONTROL of their kitchen and perhaps that is why we are so much obsessed with food and we express our love and care with food… Nothing can stop us from eating and cooking and serving – at least we can control this small but very vital area of our lives: We cook for the ones we love…
For the New Year dinner I will cook a recipe I have created with love for my son and for the whole family: I will cook chicken with sweet oranges and clementine tangerines adding olive oil from Karpaz… The sweetness of the oranges and the tangerines will caramelize the skin of the chicken and we will serve it with love and hope that one day the Cypriots will finally be able to get the wheel of their lives and live in a country not with the uncertainty of partition but with the certainty of peace…

19.12.2014

(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 28th of December 2014, Sunday.

`Pain looks like an earthquake…`

`Pain looks like an earthquake…`

Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

Young peace activist Orestis Agisilaou sends me a note:
`Since 2001, United Nations have decided to celebrate the peace on 21/9 every year. At the moment many wars take place in the world. Children are killed every day in Palestine, innocent people are killed in Iraq and Ukraine every day. At all over the world the violence and the terror take place. Cyprus is a country which suffered and is still suffering from a war also. Forty years ago, the county was divided into two parts and Cypriots were told that the borders of their country aren't Kyrenia or Limassol but a buffer zone in the middle of the island. Every Cypriot's dream became half. Our multi coloured island became black and grey. A lot of people were killed. Many of them are still missing. Hundreds of Cypriots became refugees by violence and 40 years later they still hoping to live at least one day at their village before they die. The younger ones are growing up in a divided country and they feel the other community as a stranger. Now, due to
the international peace day, a lot of events take place in order to celebrate peace. And after what? Will we go after home to sleep and to continue our everyday life? The International Day of Peace isn't a reason to go out to see an event, to have fun and after to return home. We should put this day in our everyday life and to celebrate it 365 days a year. If we love honestly our common island we have to take into account the messages of this day and to start working for a better Cyprus. People say that the pain looks like an earthquake. Both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots felt the pain. When an earthquake finishes, people fix the damages of their houses. In the case of Cyprus the materials aren't cement and bricks but love, trust and comprehension. We wait this reconstruction of our home 40 years now…`
Yes the pain that all communities have felt in Cyprus in the last half century is like an earthquake as Orestis points out and each and every step to fix the damage that the pain has done to our people must be encouraged…
Sometimes I encounter people who ask me `Do you think that we will have a solution soon?`
I feel very awkward when I encounter this question and answer them with another question:
`Are you a student at elementary school?`
Problem in Cyprus is that there is absolutely no encouragement from either side for cooperation, for mending our damaged house, for building afresh something that would stand to earthquakes… Problem in Cyprus is that people are far ahead of political structures in both communities – our culture is one that quickly adapts: Cyprus for thousands of years have experienced many civilizations coming and going and Cypriots always found a way to survive by quickly adapting to new conditions… But politicians want to keep things the way it is: Not all politicians of course but exceptions are not the rule – there are always exceptions and good examples but the mainstream politics and policies in this country on either side does not encourage cooperation, not even curiosity about each other… The worst pieces of `news` is selected, when something `good` happens, it is completely ignored by the mainstream politics…
For many years teachers from the two main communities of the island, Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot have been coming together to create new teaching materials for schools and they have produced wonderful books for teachers about for instance how to teach the humanitarian issue of `missing persons` in their classrooms… Neither the Turkish Cypriot, nor the Greek Cypriot authorities have ever allowed these teaching materials officially into the schools. With the efforts of some progressive teachers' trade unions and progressive teachers, some books have been distributed in some schools but this does not make a great impact on the mainstream politics and policies… Our leaders in both sides of the partition line, prefer to hold on to their own rhetoric, their own status quo and organizing events at schools with students have come across great obstacles in some cases… One very good Greek Cypriot friend whose father is `missing` from Karpasia and
whose family suffered quite a lot in 1974 has a heart of gold: He tried desperately for two years to organize a meeting where we would visit the high school he was teaching in Nicosia – he was assistant headmaster – and a Turkish Cypriot and a Greek Cypriot relative of a `missing person` would speak to the students… It proved impossible to organize this event despite his insistence – even the progressive teachers reacted to our proposition saying that `They did not want any trouble in their schools from the known fascist circles`, therefore avoiding efforts of reconciliation and keeping their own `status quo`, their own positions, their own `safe` places… In the end, our dear Greek Cypriot friend was sent to a village to teach: I do not know whether this was due to his very insistent efforts at trying to do an activity of reconciliation at his school or whether it was just a technical and professional decision by the authorities. I did not ask
him because I was a bit scared of what the answer might be… I did not want to find out whether my prediction had come true…
Another dear friend, a young woman teacher who organized events with us at the schools she had been teaching had horrible experiences of being cast out by other Greek Cypriot teachers from her school, gossip spread about her, being alienated and outcast in her school. Not that she was afraid of such things but still it set out an example to others who might have wanted to join her for such peaceful events… It reminded me of Denktash times when we were being alienated, gossip spread about us in order to make sure that people would not support our peaceful activities, that they would fear what might happen to them (not to us!!!)…
But we have in both sides of the partition line, young, courageous people like Orestis who go out of their way in order to try to mend their house damaged by the earthquakes of the past… And they need our support, our encouragement, our good hearted will to be able to carry on… If we don't mend our house together, we will continue to suffer and invite more suffering and more earthquakes… Our whole region is on fire and we still need to figure out how to stay alive together on this land called Cyprus…

3.12.2014

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 21st of December 2014, Sunday.

Understanding the struggle for `missing persons` in Mexico…

Understanding the struggle for `missing persons` in Mexico…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

We have connections with Mexico through the humanitarian issue of `missing persons` - through Mexican Cordelia Rizzo, an activist who works with the relatives of `missing persons` we have learned a lot about what has been happening in Mexico, connecting Cyprus and Mexico on this dramatic and sad issue, exhibiting the scarves that Mexican relatives of `missing persons` embroider in Cyprus… Every Sunday relatives gather in the town squares and embroider and exhibit these scarves – on the scarves they actually embroider the stories of their own `missing persons` and we have managed with the help of dear Cordelia Rizzo to exhibit them in Cyprus last year… One of the active members of `Together We Can`, the Bi-Communal Initiative of Relatives of Missing Persons and Victims of War in Cyprus, Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia embroidered a scarf in solidarity with the relatives of Mexican `missing persons` and we had sent this – now in these days of
demonstration in Mexico, Christina's scarf is currently exhibited at the University Monterrey…
Recently through the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico, since September there has been mass demonstrations about `missing persons` not only in Mexico but also internationally… Mexico has thousands of `missing persons` and our dear friend Cordelia Rizzo a few days ago on the 20th of November 2014 wrote an article about what is happening now in Mexico concerning the `missing` students and why it became part of the agenda of the people now… I want to share her article with you… Under the heading `Understanding Ayotzinapa`, Cordelia Rizzo says:
`On September 26th, 43 students, most of whom were just beginning their first year of college at the Teacher's College of Ayotzinapa, were kidnapped from Iguala. This attack, which also resulted in the deaths of several students, was allegedly ordered by Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, the mayor and first lady of Iguala. News of the disappearances broke out through a photo taken of student Julio Cesar Mondragon's cadaver; his skull was exposed and bleeding, his eyes gouged out. After the picture went viral – as is often organized crime's intention in capturing these images – the nation slowly realized the extent of September 26th's tragedy. Mondragon's face was wiped out while he was still alive.
Attacks on Mexico's youth have been taking place for years, but this time is different. This time, society's outcry has been coherent, clear, and unified in a way that many say is unprecedented.
Why now?
What is happening with the Ayotzinapa case has, in a way, taken place before. In 1974, Lucio Cabañas, leader of the Party of the Poor and an alumnus of the Teacher's College of Ayotzinapa, was also killed – in an ambush by the Mexican Army. Footage of his autopsy was recorded; it was meant to be televised. Like Mondragon's corpse, Cabañas' body was a message to and a metaphor for Mexican society. What followed was more systematic harassment and disappearances of student leaders who sympathized with Cabañas' ideals during the '70s and '80s. This dark period is the infamous Dirty War, which kicked off in '68 – and the state of Guerrero, where the Teacher's College of Ayotzinapa is located, suffered the most.
Thirty years later, Guerrero and other northern states found themselves at the epicentre of violence once again, this time with Mexico's war on drugs – a war that has led to more than 100,00 deaths, not including the 27,000 missing.
The collusion between local authorities and organized crime can no longer be ignored.
In 2010 alone, Ciudad Juarez endured the Villas de Salvarcar massacre, in which sixteen persons (mostly high school students from CBTIS) were killed and twelve wounded in a house after twenty sicarios opened fire on them. Their parents had to endure the fact that the deaths were not the result of settling a rift among rival cartel members, as then-President Calderon assured, but a mistake. Meanwhile in Monterrey, Jorge Mercado and Javier Arredondo, graduate students from the engineering schools at Monterrey's Technological Institute, were killed in a cross fire between the army and alleged sicarios inside the campus. Their bodies were manipulated – student IDs removed from their wallets – to make it seem like they were criminals.
In San Fernando, in the perennial PRI stronghold of Tamaulipas, 72 migrants were found dead. Coverage of this event simmered down within weeks even though hundreds of bodies were found. More than 300 were disappeared and killed in Allende, Coahuila (another PRI stronghold) in 2011, but when the Mexican public learned about this in 2013 no protests followed. In Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, 6 young men were disappeared in 2013. After roughly a month, police found their alleged remains, which were supposedly dissolved in acid. Urns with ashes and a sticker from the local government (as if branding the deaths) were handed to the families.
The disappearances from the Dirty War happened 40 years ago, and amount to a few hundred missing compared to the tens of thousands of disappearances of the past 8 years. But those of us who have been observing closely see a continuum that can no longer be ignored: the collusion between local authorities and organized crime.
Mexico's crisis of disappearances is unlike any others that have happened in Latin America. Some have been enacted by the State, while others have been committed by cartels and organized crime. But this latter type is rarely investigated thoroughly, and very few of victims have been identified. Former President Vicente Fox rose to power promising to bring the Dirty War cases to justice, but the tribunal set up for such a task was conveniently dismantled and no responsible parties were tried. Today, in the era of NSA surveillance, authorities in Mexico routinely claim to have no information on the whereabouts of the disappeared. They construe outlandish theories to discourage relatives in their search.
And yet, it has been very difficult to raise awareness until now. Guerrero has long seemed like a foreign land to many Mexicans. Identified with Marxist and Socialist ideals, which are not popular in the North and several other conservative parts of Mexico, the region is considered indomitable – an image that authorities perpetuated by casting victims of violence as deserving agitators. But Guerrero is also a time capsule, it holds the memory of what it meant to be young and committed. And this is what has come to the fore after the events of September 26th.
Finally, the portrait that emerged of the 43 missing — rural first-year teaching students from one of the poorest states in Mexico — made it clear that they were not, as former president Felipe Calderon once intimated of the tens of thousands of victims during the early years of the drug war he initiated, corrupt and somehow deserving of their fate. They were simply innocent victims. Today, a multitude of Mexicans are looking beyond the stigma that the students of its highlands have endured for decades. We finally see in the faces of these men, who barely touched adulthood our hopes shattered. Ayotzinapa symbolizes the peasantry, the origins of the Mexican peoples. Perhaps we might also unknowingly begin to come to peace with our indigenous roots, an aspect of our heritage we are never at ease with.
The events in the seemingly remote mountains of Guerrero have galvanized a stream of frustrations that no soccer game or finely tailored telenovela can distract us from. It has dragged the grand multitude of Mexicans who wouldn't show empathy towards the war's victims into the protests, and made them admit, for the first time, that they too are vulnerable.
Today, Nov. 20, Mexico celebrates the 104th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution with a national day of marches and work stoppages. Today, and every day until there is justice, we show the world that #TodossomosAyotzinapa.`
http://remezcla.com/features/understanding-ayotzinapa/


Photo: `Mother if I disappeared where did I go?` says the scarf embroidered by the relative of a `missing` person from Mexico...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 14th of December 2014, Sunday.