Eulogy from Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia for her father Pavlos Solomi and her brother Solomis Pavlou Solomi
Today, 3rd March 2018, the chapter of “waiting” is closing.
We always hoped for a different, a joyful reunion in Komi Kebir, at our village.
The news, however, came 43 years later and we are meeting you smaller than us, frozen in time, with only your bones in a small box, here in the church of Agios Loukas in the Agios Athanasios settlement in Limassol, for your funeral.
It was August 15, 1974 when our whole family was arrested in our home in Komi Kebir by Turkish Cypriot co-villagers and they transferred us to the village of Galatia.
There, it was the last moment that I saw you alive, and even that was a fleeting glimpse, since they rushed us away from you, on that black day.
Pashias had personally promised us that in three days you would be coming back to us in our house in Komi. But this never happened.
We had difficult years on our own, my mother and I, always thinking about you and anxiously waiting for some good news.
I want to tell you my father and Solo, that God did not desert us. I married into a good family who supported me as much as they could during the difficult moments of my life and I thank them.
From up there you must be able to see and be proud.
In this wonderful family, is my husband Vasos, who if you were here father, you would have been proud of his kindness and worthiness. He is so much like you.
My family grew. Father you have three grandchildren, and you Solo, have nephews and a niece, Pavlos, Argyro and Giorgos. They were not fortunate to meet their grandfather or their uncle, to play with you, to joke or to get your advice.
My mother went everywhere to find out news about you. She only received promises, that “they” would try “Promises of the moment”, as I always called them. No one in the “high positions”, came forward to support us, to see if we needed something or to advise us. Nobody ever came forward to say what they knew about you or what had happened to you. We always lived in hope.
There were too many “whys…. “. No matter how hard I tried, I could not find anyone to give me the answer! The only thing I understood beyond any doubt, is that fanaticism and hatred brought us to where we are now! Some pseudo-patriots did what they did to innocent people and unfortunately we paid the great price, like so many others, to be burying you today. You were two great men (“leventes”), 42 and 18 years old. You were in your village and in your jobs, with your dreams for the future with your family, without hurting anyone and without being involved in anything. This was also the reason that you had decided that we should stay in our village.
We are not fortune enough to even bury you in our village, in our Komi, which you loved so much and where you made your dreams, the dreams of our whole family.
We are burying you today, here in Limassol which has been hosting us for so many years. So be it, as long as we are all together again! There will now be a grave, a point of reference for us. Your new home, where I will come to light your candle and we will talk about “our” things. And I have a lot to tell you.
Once I promised my mother, who could not continue the struggle of searching for you anymore, that I would continue her struggle, that I would find you and bring you to her before she died, that there would be a proper funeral according to our religion, and a grave to light your candle. That promise that I made is fulfilled today.
Today, here in front of your sacred bones, I make a new promise –that I will fight as much as I can for peace, reconciliation and the reunification of our Cyprus. A Cyprus for all of us, as you always said father. -It is too small to be divided, but big enough to fit all of us.
No more tears. No more pointless shedding of blood! No more women in black and orphaned children! It’s enough!
Finally, I must express the biggest “thank you” to the Turkish Cypriot investigative journalist Sevgul Uludag- a humble person, with a big Cypriot heart, who stood by me since 2008 and supported me morally and psychologically during the difficult times, as my friend until today. By writing our stories in the newspapers, YeniDuzen and POLITIS, where she works, she brought me in contact with the witnesses and we slowly managed the impossible.
I owe a very big public “thank you” to those Turkish Cypriot unsung heroes who, with the murderers still alive in their region, risked a lot but still came to us, without ever expecting anything in return. With their information and their persistence, the Missing Persons Committee was able to locate the burial site, carry out the exhumation so that we could have the funeral taking place today.
I must also say a big thank you to the members of the Missing Persons Committee, who helped collect and document the information with anthropologists, archaeologists and geneticists from both communities.
Finally, I would like to thank all of you, Greek Cypriots but also Turkish Cypriots, who with your presence today honour their memory in their last journey.
May the soil of the foreign land which will cover you be light!
We will always remember you!
...r.i.p.
