by humanist » Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:50 am
Zan this is the story of a 6 and 2 month year old boy in 1974.
Mum and dad crying...... the little boy says why are you crying "mama"? becuase there is a war and all the men have to go and your dad has to go to war. But he will be ok becuase he will be with theo (uncle) Kypro, Christakis, Andreas and Yioryos. But don't worry yiayia (grandmother) is going to stay with us and keep us company.
Dad heads off to war ... a few day later the little boy and his mother and grandmother go to church. After church there was a whole lot of new women and children whom he never met before and people were crying. The little boy says "mama" who are all these people and why are they crying? She says, they are refugees and they've come here until the war is over. What's a refugee "mama"? Well they are people who had to leave their homes because the Turks have taken their homes. How come we don't have refugees staying with us. Well because they don't know we have room and that's good also becasue it means there's less refugees who lost their homes.
The next morning the little boy wakes up in his mother's bed with his 2 year old brother and grandmother and his 20 year old aunt in a fold up bed in the room. The little boy is told that God has answered his wish and refugees were sleeping in his room and lots of them in the floor in the loung/ dining room. At getting out of bed there were 27 people in the house ranging from 70 years of age to 2 years of age.
Filled with excitment that his family was helping less fortunate people he was kind a happy in an innocent kind of a way. He shared his toys with other children and took his little brother under his wing as he was the oldest in the family, till "papa" would return. Weeks went by and the refugees were still there, as things intensified food run out and one day he was asked by his mother and aunt to go to "thea" (aunt) Sophia's home with his cousin and his sister to bring back some haloumi. We walked about 200 meters to their home to get the haloumi. As the three little children were about to walk out the front door a Turksih bomber went past, with a thunderous noise. They all freked out so bad that their mother's could hear their screams and they come to pick them up. Tat event went by and back to normality as normal as a war could be.
In the meantime one of the refugees in his home, found out that her son all of 18-20 years was killed, ther was mayhem, as she took off to go to her village that she could see was being bombed and fire was coming from evry direction. The little boys home was situated on the outskirts of the village on a hil and the villages from the north could be sseen clearly as could the bombers droping their bombs.
Soon after that his mother approached him and said to him yiayia Kyriakou will look after you for a little because mama and yiayia Eleni will go look for your papa because we don't know where he is. traumatised and scared the little boy had no choice but to trust that all will be well. After a few days mama and yiayia return with good news that papa and theo Kypro are well and they are fighting the Turks. Not long after that an yiayia's brother in this 60's comes to their home and talks to yiayia and mama in private and then all hell broke loose. Yiayia was informeed that her 17.5 year old son was injured and his whereabouts were not known, cries everywhere. Not only did we have a refugee who lost their son but we also now have yiayia lossing her son and mama her brother.
Hopes that the information was wrong came in as they tried to comfort yiayia, tho his relationship with his yiayia was so strong that one day she took him for a walk and told him that she knew theo Kypro was dead and that his papou (grandfather) who died a year earlier was going to be waiting for him in heaven.
The war was over and the men came back, the refugee women's husbands also found their way to the little boys home. A month or two later one of the refugee women gave birth to a beautiful little girl, joy was brought bach to the house. The refugees were feeling that they were in the way and considered leaving, but where to go their homes and properties were under turkish control. mama and papa offered them to use the one side of the house to build some rooms to get by. So they all got together and within three moths 14 people were living in a 3 rooms on the side of the house, sharing an indoor bathroom in the main house and an outdoor danny made of a hole in the ground and a timber box constructed around, that was the life of all these people for over a year.
years went by and the fate of theo kypro was unknown, stories that POW's were taken to turkey were becoming popular, so the little boy hoped that this uncle was taken to turkey, made to speak turkish and one day he met a young Turkish woman and got married. Nice thought but very far from the truth. Some more years went by and the little boys parents decided to immigrate because they did not want their children to have to go through a similar expreienece. So they leave Cyprus.
Years went on and yiayia dies at age 74, with a broken heart knowing that her son is dead and her daughter is living thousands of kilometeres away. They little boy now a man attending University was crushed knowing that his yiayia died broken hearted. A few years later his kother is invited to go to Cyprus because thrugh DNA testing they located theo Kypro's bones and sate burial was carried out. An end to a saga.
Australia Day 2007 January 24. This grown man now 38 is enjoying a bush walk along the most beautiful Sydeny harbour, then a military show of the airforce, a bomber goes by, he gets excited at the sound and speed of this machinery. Then it goes over again and again and again, by the 5th time the fear of what that machinery represents came back, then as an adult he questions what is all that about? That is what the children of Iraq are experiencing everyday and memeories just crept back.
That is my story in a nutshell Zan, so when people start making threats of war or conflict as the turks want to term it it concerns me. That is my life and the life of many other innocent people so please don't tell me, that war has benefits, if these are the benefits of war then I do not wish for them at all.
