Monday, November 18, 2013

On the `Hill with Ears` in Pileri…

On the `Hill with Ears` in Pileri…
 
Sevgul Uludag
 
 
Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436
 
If it wasn't for the insistence of Michalis Giangou Savva, the five `missing` from Pileri, as well as others `missing` from the area would not have been found… Michalis Giangou Savva whose brother Costas had been `missing` from Pileri since the battle on the `Kulakli Tepe` (`The Hill With Ears` as the Turkish Cypriots call it) or `Kalampaki` as the Greek Cypriots call it since 1974… The brother of Michalis Giangou Savva, Costas had been stationed here together with four other Greek Cypriots… I had interviewed Michalis in 2007 and we had gone to the `Kalampaki` or `Kulakli Tepe` in 2009 together with the Turkish Cypriot mukhtar of Pileri (Bilelle – Gocheri village) on a tractor. The mukhtar, a kind hearted old man had told Michalis and me that we could not go there with our cars and he had taken us with a tractor to point out where he had seen up on top of the hill five `missing persons` and had told us that they had never been buried. We had shown this area to the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and they had sent a team of archaeologists to go up the hill – there had been no road to go up the hill so they had had to climb like mountain climbers until they got permission from the villagers to build a road to go up the hill… So the bulldozer of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, with the instructions of Okan Oktay, the Coordinator of Exhumations, had built a road to go up the `Kalampaki`… This had been four years ago…
Michalis and his `missing` brother was coming from a poor working class family. His father Giangos had come to Nicosia from Kinoussa from Paphos when he had lost his father at the age of eight, to work as a child worker with his two sisters and a brother. He had ended up as a shoe maker, joining PEO and having very good relations with Turkish Cypriot shoe makers. He had married Christalla from Giallousa who was also a working class woman who had come to Nicosia to work… They would live in Tahtakala and later on in Tanti's mahalla where the poorest Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot workers rented small houses from Tanti. Giangos and Christalla would have five kids, all boys…
`Poverty united people in those times` Michalis had told me, `They did not see each other as Turkish Cypriot or Greek Cypriot… They were telling us that poor people were good people. We were a family of the left; we were members of AKEL… For many years, my father would take me to the commemoration of Dervish Ali Kavazoghlou and Costas Mishaoulis in the village Dali. We would go on his bicycle. Imagine, he was going with his bicycle from Nicosia to Dali, to attend the commemoration ceremony of Kavazoghlou. When Kavazoghlou had been killed, I remember my father crying a lot… I finished elementary school and started the secondary school but when my father got sick, I had to leave school – we had no money to pay to the school so at the age of 13 I began working. I was working in a workshop repairing televisions and I had learnt to install antenna. I was working as a technician in the company Dikran Ouzounian-Barot Sultanian. And I was also crossing to the Turkish Cypriot area of Nicosia – there was this guy called Mouhyi who was selling Phillips TVs and I was going there to install the antenna until 1974.
After the checkpoints opened I took my mother to the Tanti mahalla and she would remember the house she lived in… When we knocked on the door an old woman opened the door and my mother and she looked at each other and started remembering, without speaking… They sat down and cried together… The last time they had seen each other was 46-47 years ago! This was the neighbourhood of poor people… In this mahalla, some Turkish Cypriots would kill some Greek Cypriots and some Greek Cypriots would kill some Turkish Cypriots so we would move away from here in 1958 to Agios Pavlos, building a small house there… After my brother went `missing` in 1974, my father got very sick and could not take what happened to my brother. He died in 1976… And my mother, while waiting for the remains of my brother to be returned, died in 2011 at the age of 89…
My mother waited for any news from my brother Costas. As soon as the news began every night on TV, she would be all ears, waiting for any news from her `missing` son… She died waiting for the remains to be returned to her…`
Once again we go on the 8th of October 2013 with Michalis and with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee – new excavations began on the `Kalampaki` hill – there had been some information that on the `Kalampaki` hill, there might be not five but six `missing` persons so Michalis would explain this and the archaeologists would continue to search the hill and the slopes and the area for any other remains…
After I write the story of `Kulakli Tepe` (`Kalampaki`) in YENIDUZEN, one of my Turkish Cypriot readers calls me to tell me that his father had been on that hill and had been arrested by Greek Cypriot soldiers in July 1974… He had escaped after some time and later on, when the battle was over, he had gone up that hill again. I ask him to convince his father to come with us and tell us what he saw, since new excavations are continuing.
So we go up the `Kulakli Tepe` again, on the 25th of October, 2013 Friday – he comes with his father and the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, Murat Soysal, Okan Oktay, Xenophon Kallis also come with us.
The old man is emotional as we travel through Pileri… We stop to get some water for him and at some point he stops the car to tell us what he saw down below…
One of his friends had taken him on the main road of Pileri-Agios Ermolaos and had stopped the car and they had walked into a field.
His friend had said to him:
`Look at these two Greek Cypriots… Were they the ones who had arrested you?`
He had seen two Greek Cypriot soldiers whose uniforms had been taken and they were left there in the field in their underwear, with no boots or clothes…
Then they had gone up the hill and he had seen one Greek Cypriot on the `Kalampaki` and his friend had told him that there had been one more Greek Cypriot in a military position up the hill who had been heavily wounded. He did not see this second one but his friend had told him. He did not know whether they took him down to take him to a hospital or whether he died in the military position because of his wounds. He would tell us the name of his friend who had taken him there and while still there, I would start enquiring whether his friend is alive – I would find out that he is in fact alive but sick and not living in his own house but taken to his son's house because of his illness. We would go visit him to find out more details about `Kalampaki` and the whole area… I thank my reader and his father, the old man, who had come and climbed all the way up, just to help the investigations of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee. My reader has been helping us a lot from the heart – he has a human heart – he has helped us to find the remains of seven other `missing` Greek Cypriots in the area of Agios Demetios-Geunyeli where he had seen the remains of some `missing persons` when he was playing in the area as a child… And now through his father, he is helping us again to find out what exactly happened in the area of Pileri…
In the evening I call Michalis Giangou Savva to tell him about our day at Pileri… We have more work to do in this area in order to find the remains of all those `missing`, as well as searching for the `truth` of what actually happened… I am very grateful to the efforts of Michalis Giangou Savva, as well as my reader and his father and all the others from the area who have helped us… The Turkish Cypriot mukhtar passed away but he too had helped us… Another reader had shown us another burial site in Pileri up on another hill called `The Daughter of the King` (`Kral Kizi`) where the remains of one other `missing person` was found – he too had never been buried and just lay there in the military position where he had been shot on that hill… He had shown us another spot down that hill where some shoes were found dating from 1974… I am also grateful to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee for enabling us to show them these possible burial sites for further investigations… When all efforts come together, we can get more results in order to at least ease the pain of the relatives of `missing persons` from this area called Pileri…
 
27.10.2013
 
Photo: Michalis Giangou Savva at Pileri with the officials of the Missing Persons' Committee...
 
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 17th of November 2013.

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